Platonic
by Aeria
Summary: Kurt/Blaine. COMPLETE. The story of how Kurt and Blaine grew apart, grew up and found happiness, before finding each other again.
1. Chapter 1

**Fic: **Platonic (Chapter 1/14+Epilogue)

**Rating: **NC-17

**Summary: **To be lost in amazement at the love and friendship and intimacy, unable to leave each other's sight, is to be soul mates. These are people who pass their whole lives together. Except for Kurt and Blaine, they missed their first chance and by the time they get their second, perhaps it is simply meant to be…platonic.

**Words:** 2088/39432

**Warnings: **Kurt and Blaine are both portrayed in relationships with OCs.

**A/N: **This is my first, proper multi-chapter fic in this fandom. Which is saying something. It is completely written, ready to be posted and I will be getting all of it out there before Glee comes back in three weeks. This is one of my many reactions to The Break Up and is it very much a 'fix it' fic so I think you all need to take a deep breath and trust me.

I need to thank a bunch of people. Spinmybowtie and Stut—ter for reading and commenting as I wrote. And then editing as I post. I honestly probably couldn't be bothered if I didn't have their help so that is invaluable. Thedorkmark for actually hearing me tell this story about eight months ago and continuously asking me to write it properly and then reading it as I wrote it and helping me come up with a title and summary and generally being the cheer section.

I really do hope you all enjoy this little fic of mine. I have honestly really enjoyed writing it!

* * *

**Chapter 1**

**_2018_**

"Have you ever been in love?"

Blaine looks across the room. Patrick has emerged from the bathroom with a towel around his waist and another in his hands. He watches Blaine with the same sharp eyes he always watches Blaine with and begins to dry his hair.

"Yeah." Blaine swings his legs over the side of the bed and slips his underwear up his legs. "Once." This isn't something they talk about.

"What happened?" He is casual in the way he asks, but Blaine knows better than to think this isn't calculated.

"I fucked it up."

* * *

Patrick is easy. Patrick is perfect. Patrick is completely against the rules.

Patrick is one of Blaine's professor's TAs. He is tall, lithe and too smart for his own good. He's quick witted and sarcastic and a lawyer. He's not like anyone Blaine met during his undergrad. He's also not like any of the snooty law students he now finds himself surrounded by.

Somehow, Blaine ended up in bed with him.

"I'm not looking for anything serious. I don't want that."

Patrick hadn't told Blaine that until after they'd fucked twice and it should have been upsetting because Blaine always wanted something serious. Before Patrick, during undergrad, there was Bradley and then James. They had been serious, they'd maybe even been headed for love and all the rest, but they hadn't been quite right. Patrick could have been right, he didn't want anything serious.

In the end Blaine had snapped at him, called him a slut, and left. They'd avoided each other until they couldn't and Blaine needed to get lost in someone. Patrick was convenient and there.

It took months before Patrick would admit that sometimes he needed to get lost as well. He didn't have time for a relationship, though, and Blaine told him that was the saddest thing he'd ever heard.

* * *

Patrick gets Blaine incredibly drunk one night. Blaine suspects it's because Patrick wants to tie him to the bed and make him come twice. Blaine asks him if that's what he's after and Patrick chuckles and says, "Maybe, maybe not."

"Tell me about the guy who broke your heart?" Patrick asks between mouthfuls of vodka, straight from the bottle.

Blaine tenses all over and feels sick. "He didn't break my heart," is all he says.

Patrick rolls his eyes, snarks back, "Fine. " Then he ties Blaine to the bed and only manages to get him off once.

* * *

"What was his name?"

Blaine stares across the bar at the lined up technicoloured bottles of liquor and avoids Patrick's gaze. He tries to remember what they're talking about. He can't and his head is starting to ache. "Who?"

"The boy in Ohio."

Blaine sighs and signals the barman for another of his usual. "He's in New York."

Patrick makes a noise in his throat that sounds like a surprised laugh because he knows New York is where Blaine wants to be. It's where Blaine did his internship the summer before. He shouldn't really be that surprised. He waits until Blaine has thrown his head back and swallowed the shot and is sucking on the straw of his coke before he asks: "You ready to tell me about him?"

Blaine sighs and grumbles something incomprehensible. He's got his jacket off the back of the chair and is halfway to the door before Patrick realizes he's invited, too. They don't talk about anything else that night and in the morning, just like usual, Blaine disappears.

* * *

At some point, they become improbable friends. At some point, Blaine cracks himself open and learns to enjoy sex again. He becomes friends with Patrick's friends and spends too many hours picking Patrick's brain on cases he has to learn.

He goes home with a dark-haired stranger one night. The next morning, he is drinking coffee at Patrick's kitchen table, giggling his way through the sexual misadventures of the night before. Patrick just smiles at him and pours more coffee.

* * *

**_2018 ~ Kurt_**

New York is home. New York is easy and comfortable. Kurt loves his work, he loves his colleagues and his friends. He loves the little parks full of dogs and kids, he loves the cafes and the restaurants. He loves the jazz clubs and the bars and all the places he goes to dance. He loves the ease with which he falls in and out of relationships and all the casual sex in between.

Jacques had been fun. Jacques was three months of listening to classical piano played live for him and breakfasts in bed and really, truly remarkable deep-throating. And then there was a reasonable sized fight and Kurt broke it off, quickly, painlessly.

Kurt obviously doesn't know but next will be Phil. Phil will be the tallest man Kurt ever dates and nothing else about their four-month association will be worth remembering.

Right now, though, Kurt is as single as he has ever been and work had drained him to the point of spending Friday night on his sofa alone and Saturday lazily cleaning his apartment. And now he is rejuvenated, laughing and dancing in between two very able-bodied men and debating which (if not both) to take home with him.

He doesn't need love or a relationship when he has all this. Or so he tells himself every single morning when he looks in the mirror and tries to catch himself getting older.

* * *

Kurt goes home for a week over Thanksgiving. He can't actually spare the time, but he packs up more sketchbooks than clothes and makes the trip anyway. Surely New York can survive one week without him.

When he lands, there are a dozen missed calls on his phone and it turns out New York is a lot more needy than he had thought. His dad gets it. Actually, his dad seems all too proud to be driving Kurt home from the airport with Kurt in the passenger seat talking quickly into his phone and casting apologetic looks towards him.

When Kurt finally remembers to breathe and clicks his phone to silent Burt is pulling into the drive and grinning. "You're doing pretty good, aren't you kid?" he asks as he pulls Kurt's bag from the trunk.

Kurt flushes hot at the praise and then throws himself into a tight hug. "Yeah, I think I am."

Thanksgiving lunch is amazing. Carole can cook and Burt is doing a hell of a lot better than he was two years ago and the whole family are genuinely thankful for it. Finn made the announcement the night before that his wife is pregnant, so they're all in good spirits.

Then they're all a little drunk.

It's Finn that asks, "So when are you gonna bring a boyfriend home?"

It takes Kurt a moment to realize he is talking to him. Kurt feels his cheeks grow hot as his mind automatically ticks back over the half dozen "boyfriends" he has had in the last six months. He thinks maybe Michael would have been up for being brought home but it would have been a favour and it would have been so painful.

Plus, it would have been a once off because Michael only lasted six weeks.

It takes him an extra moment to find an adequate answer to Finn's question. "Oh god, probably never! Work is so busy, I just don't have time for any of that."

It's a cop out and even Finn doesn't think it's a good enough response. "There must be something," Finn presses, drinking more beer. "Someone?" he teases.

"There honestly, really isn't." He stares Finn down, not particularly caring whether Finn comes to the conclusion that he's not having any sex at all or that he's having lots of it with lots of different men.

Eventually, Burt sighs and interjects, "Kurt doesn't need a man to be happy. He has his work."

It sounds a little hollow even to Kurt's ears, but when he looks up his dad is smiling at him and that's good enough.

* * *

**_2019 ~ Blaine_**

When Blaine gets back from his second summer interning in New York, this time at the DA's office, Patrick asks him about the boy that broke his heart again.

"Kurt." Blaine has no idea how long it has been since he said that name, but it still sounds exactly the same off his lips, still feels exactly the same in the way it wraps around his heart and squeezes a little. "His name was Kurt."

* * *

Blaine tells Patrick everything there is to tell and Patrick just nods along to the story as though he already knew. They talk about Blaine back then and Blaine now, and when Blaine realizes how much he's changed it feels like a bucket of cold water has been thrown over his head. How miserable and lost and dependent on everyone around him he had been, even before Kurt broke up with him. How he's none of those things now. He wonders how it happened and then he catches Patrick smirking at him and he thinks maybe he already knows.

Blaine kisses him hard across the mouth and tugs on his hair and bites his lip when he pulls back. He barely had time to get laid while he was in New York and never was as well fucked as he knows he can get here, so it isn't really a surprise that he is he's already turned on. "You got plans tonight?"

Kissing him and already working quickly to get Blaine's pants undone, Patrick grins again and says, "Nope."

They fuck right there in the kitchen and it's hot and fast: bone-deep satisfaction interlaced with grins and teases and altercations with furniture. Blaine pulls the blanket off the back of the sofa and then they end up lying on the cold hardwood floors and laughing together afterwards.

* * *

"Would you have stayed with him if you could?"

Blaine turns his head sideways and wonders how long Patrick has been mulling over that question. Blaine still doesn't understand why he wants to know but he has a sneaking suspicion it's because he cares. Sighing, Blaine says, "Yeah. Probably forever."

Patrick chuckles and Blaine attempts to glare at him. Catching his wrist, Patrick makes him look him in the eye and asks, "But not now?"

"I'm here and he's there."

And now Patrick laughs outright and resists the urge to tease because he knows it is so much more complicated than that. "Oh my god, Blaine," he says exasperated.

"He's happy," Blaine says, hoping it's true.

Patrick stills again, sliding back towards serious. "Are you?"

For the first time in years Blaine realizes: "I think I will be."

* * *

"I think I have some news," is how Patrick begins. He waits until Blaine is up on an elbow facing him. "I've been offered a job in London."

"You're kidding?" Blaine sounds happy, he feels happy. He didn't even know Patrick was applying overseas.

"Nope. They flew me over three weeks ago and gave me the job on the spot." He shrugs, self-effacing because Blaine knows he graduated top of his class and was just waiting for the right job offer to come along.

"When do you leave?" It's the obvious question.

"Next week."

Blaine wonders if he should feel upset, betrayed, or lost, and he slides down onto his back to stare at the ceiling and think about it. He will miss Patrick and he thinks he might try to stay in touch.

"You gonna miss me?"

Without thinking, Blaine responds: "I'll miss the sex."

And then Patrick is laughing and straddling him, wrestling him back and holding him still because they both know that's not the whole truth.

* * *

Blaine doesn't drive Patrick to the airport. There's a party he doesn't want to miss and it seems inappropriate to play taxi to a fuckbuddy when a transatlantic flight looms. He still doesn't feel sad. They send the occasional text, leave each other drunk voice mails detailing particularly disastrous hook-ups, and then mostly they stop talking altogether.

* * *

Three months after Patrick leaves, Blaine gets stuck across campus during a downpour that doesn't want to stop. It's freezing cold and he can see the fog starting to edge in on the night and he's soaked through by the time he runs back into the library he'd just left. He swears, drops his books, and his whole body shivers.

And then he meets Ben.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

**_2020 ~ Kurt_**

Kurt falls in love by accident. He has three cocktails on an empty stomach and both Bec and Tracy have been dancing with him ridiculously for half an hour. Out of nowhere the rug is pulled out from under him. The rug-puller's name is Nicolas and he has an arm looped seductively around Kurt's waist and is whispering in Kurt's ear before Kurt even sees his face.

"I've been watching you for hours and oh my _god _that sounded creepy!" Then there is a blushing man in front of him, grinning and blinking at him with big brown doe eyes under chocolate-colored curls. "Let me try again?"

They are jostled by other people dancing and Bec's hip knocks Kurt forward into the other man's arms for an instant before he's righted.

"I'm Nicolas." He grins that same sweet grin and offers his hand.

Kurt kisses him and takes him home well before he can sober up enough to realize who Nicolas reminds him of.

* * *

It isn't the sex. It's the morning after. Nicolas stays over which isn't unheard of. And then Nicolas takes him out for breakfast which, again, isn't unheard of. A few months of casual interaction might be nice and that gets Kurt thinking about just how many boyfriends he has had in the last year and how many one night stands there have been, and with a start he realizes that there really haven't been that many at all. Not when he compares it to five years ago. Maybe he is getting too old for this.

There's a niggling thought, one he hasn't had since he was a teenager, that says maybe he wants to start thinking about settling down.

So, he watches Nicolas across the table and they end up ordering a second and then a third coffee as they talk about anything and everything. Kurt realizes with a start that he's already imagining sharing an apartment with this stranger. A dog. Kids. And he wonders when the fuck that happened.

It isn't until much later that he recognises the imagined apartment, the imagined pet, the Sunday mornings and late nights and all the domesticity. It isn't until much, much later that Kurt realizes he's dredging up almost decade-old immature, indulgent fantasies. He hates himself for it.

He still starts seeing Nicolas—musician/actor/waiter Nic—on a semi-regular basis.

* * *

"I think we should probably quit while we're ahead." It's not really a break up line and they're not out at dinner or cuddling on the couch. They're lying in bed, naked, and still panting, staring at the ceiling.

Kurt doesn't expect it at all and that is what Nic thought. Kurt has never had need for the phrase, "You're breaking up with me," but he says it now and feels his eyes already stinging.

Nic laughs and touches his cheek. "There's nothing to break up. We were casual. I said that and you said that and then you ignored it."

Musician/actor/waiter Nic, this random stranger who Kurt had shared his bed with for only a few months and who he seemed, inexplicably, to be in love with, was gone ten minutes late. Kurt never saw him again.

* * *

**_2021 Blaine_**

Blaine is finally happy. Years of law school that should have left him feeling harrowed and miserable have worked out. His father isn't pleased, but he seems resigned: Blaine is going into criminal law. He is going to be a public prosecutor. He has decided and no half-hearted argument by his father is going to change his mind

And he has the grades, the connections, the charm to get his foot in the door. On top of that, he has the tenacity and the intelligence to keep him there. He worked his ass off over the summer between his second and third years, interning in New York at the DA's office with only Patrick's late night phone calls to get him through. He had loved it, though. He had slipped right into the role and had been good at it.

He graduates Stanford, scoring better than he expects and then he works even harder, prepping for the Bar exam. Ben brings him coffee, and forces him to stop for lunch, and very occasionally drags him into the shower to wash his hair and distract him for an hour or two. Blaine walks out of the Bar exam breathing easily and grinning. The job waiting for him in New York is guaranteed.

He doesn't want to have to talk to Ben about it, he doesn't want to have to consider what kind of negotiations will take place now that he needs to move to the East Coast and Ben doesn't.

Except Ben laughs at him and says he will go anywhere with him. As simply as that Blaine is moving to New York with Ben and starting as a research attorney with the D.A.'s office at the end of the month.

* * *

Blaine loves Ben like he doesn't think he has ever loved anyone. Almost a year together at university and Ben is thinking about another degree or spending some time writing—he says he has a novel in him though he will never tell Blaine what it's about—but for now, he'll follow Blaine to New York.

They're in the city, looking at apartments and arguing about money when Blaine stops suddenly in the street. He's frozen and his hand in Ben's drags him back laughing and looking around to see what has caught his attention.

On the opposite corner of the intersection stands, unmistakably, Kurt Hummel. It's been five years, Blaine thinks. Three years after he graduated, Blaine met up with some Warblers at the Lima Mall over Christmas and Kurt must have been in town visiting his dad. So as fate would have it… five years.

And now here he is, natural habitat and all. Billowing coat, immaculately tailored and pressed, oversized folio, shoulder bag, and sunglasses perched high on his head. He's on the phone and he's just gotten out of a cab and he's smiling.

"What?" Ben asks, staring in the right direction but not so easily picking Kurt out of the bustling crowd of New Yorkers.

Blaine goes to answer but his voice cracks. He swallows and tries again. "That's my ex." His teeth clack because he's not sure he's ever called Kurt that. "I mean, from way, way back. High school."

Ben laughs and looks from one to the other. "You dated in high school?" Because Ben met Blaine through a mutual friend in college and remembers with sharp acuity the lack of dating history available through gossip. There was one very vague rumour about Blaine having an affair with a tutor and a few short-lived failed relationships during his undergrad years, but that was it. Ben never would have pegged Blaine as someone to date in high school, especially since he was gay and in Ohio.

Looking harder across the intersection, Ben works out who Blaine is talking about and can't stop himself from looking his boyfriend's ex up and down.

Blaine thinks he must be intimidated a little: who wouldn't be?

Except then Ben is dragging Blaine across the street, weaving in and out of traffic and jay-walking the intersection in a way that earns them honking horns and one car's tires screeching to a halt.

Kurt sees them before they get there. The honk of a taxi close by makes him look up lazily from where he's riffling through his bag, but his eyes widen when he sees Blaine being tugged by the hand towards him. They're blue in the sunshine and exactly like they were when they were young. But everything else is different.

Blaine notices in an instant that Kurt's skin is darker by just a shade. His hair has highlights and is shorter, spiked and ruffled. The clothes are stunning, just like Blaine remembers, tight and flattering, fashionable but with a practicality about them that's new and Blaine wonders if Kurt's doing what he set out to do.

Kurt keeps staring back at him and for a split second, Blaine thinks he looks terrified and lost and younger than ever. And then he's grinning, flashing his teeth and placing his folio and bag at his feet.

There are a couple of missed beats. Both of them just looking, both of them very, very aware that Ben is standing there, looking back and forth between them and slowly sliding from thinking he is about to hear hilarious anecdotes about teenaged Blaine to realizing there is so much more here.

"Blaine Anderson," Kurt eventually says, sounding pleasantly surprised. "Finally made it back to New York City."

Blaine laughs, awkwardly, blushing even though he doesn't know why. Ben is watching. "Kurt Hummel," he returns, "Exactly where I left you."

He regrets it the second it's out. But all three of them laugh anyway.

* * *

They get coffee at a little café just around the corner. Kurt seems to know the man behind the register and speaks quickly to him, securing them a table out in the sun. They order their coffees and Blaine declines when Ben offers to split a slice of chocolate cake with him.

Blaine can't stop staring at Kurt, waiting for it to punch him in the gut and leaving him sobbing. He half expects it to, in some cliché way. He remembers having his heart broken when he was barely eighteen years old and he remembers how many months it took for him to stop crying at night. He expects it to come back but instead he just feels awkward, sitting there between his ex-high school sweetheart and the man he's about to move to New York with.

Picking up on at least some of what is transpiring, Ben laughs and introduces himself, talks for both of them and answers Kurt's polite questions about what they're doing in New York.

Eventually, inevitably, Kurt is sipping his latte and turning his eyes to Blaine. "I thought you were going to work at your dad's firm?"

Blaine smiles and thinks Kurt would be so proud to hear the full story, to see how far Blaine has come. "It wasn't for me. All the suits and the multi-billion dollar cases and the nameless corporations as clients." Blaine shrugs. "I'm too much of a people person. Working for the state makes more sense. It's what I want."

Kurt's smile grows almost wistful and his fingers flex against the table. "You sound so sure."

"I interned with them last summer so I kind of am."

Speaking suddenly and a little too loudly, Ben hears the surprise in Kurt's voice: "You were here last summer?"

"And the summer before to intern at Whitney & Tomlins," Ben provides and he watches Kurt's face and sees the disappointment there.

"You should have told me," Kurt says, not looking away from Blaine for even a moment.

And now this is even more awkward than stories of teenage love and stupidity. Blaine takes a long mouthful of coffee and shrugs. Then lies, "I wasn't even sure you were still in New York."

There isn't very much to say to that and Ben is there, changing the subject and directing the conversation until they've drunk their coffees and Kurt starts to look at his watch.

They say goodbye and Ben watches as they don't exchange numbers.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: **Thank you to everyone who is reading this. Thank you especially to everyone who has taken the time to review! Hearing what people think and seeing my story really start to take effect is nothing short of amazing! I turn 25 in a half hour and I needed this chapter out before then!

**Chapter Three**

Ben doesn't mention it for a few days. Instead, he chose to dwell privately on it and attempt to work out what he sat there and observed. It was obvious that there were still feelings, certainly from Blaine, probably from Kurt, and yet Blaine claimed it had been over eight years since their high school relationship had ended.

Ben had kissed three people during high school. Two boys and a girl. He remembers her name and he remembers the boy he lost his virginity to but not the other one. And if he ran into any of them there would be no tension. Ben thinks Blaine could be lying, that maybe there was a messy break-up or some sort of abuse. He speculates wildly for three days and then asks Blaine.

Much to Ben's dismay, Blaine just shrugs it off and says that at the time, it had hurt to break-up with someone he was so committed to.

Ben pushes for more and asks Blaine what he isn't saying. He gets angry, and in turn Blaine gets defensive. He hardly ever fights with Ben, and never ever like this. So while Ben yells at him in their New York hotel room, Blaine just grimaces and nods along to every accusation, unwilling to admit to the truth, not out loud, not to someone else, not when he has pushed it so far down inside him for so long. He won't say it and then Ben is threatening to leave, and Blaine feels his heart clench, but it is nowhere near as bad as he remembers heartbreak feeling and that terrifies him.

So, he tells Ben all of it. That he and Kurt were soul mates and somehow they lost each other. That he fucked it up and because of that they missed out on having something special that probably could have lasted forever. And that is what matters most, isn't it? The fact that somehow they lost each other.

Ben looks like he's being slapped as he stops by the door and stares at his boyfriend, at the way Blaine's cheeks flush red, and his tears spill over when he blinks and sighs. Blaine continues, "Soul mates are meant to find each other when they need each other, when they're ready, and sure, maybe I needed him in high school, and I think he needed me but…" Blaine trails off, opens his eyes and feels the room spin. "Now I need someone for forever because I am ready for that. I am not some seventeen year old kid who doesn't know how to want for myself, let along how to get it. Now I am so, so ready. I'm ready for the next step. I want the forever, the kids and a house and a family and a future."

He crosses the room, moves closer to Ben who is staring at him like he doesn't know him. Blaine wraps both hands around Ben's and stops himself from saying what he is thinking because he hates that he is thinking it and Ben doesn't deserve that, not at all.

Blaine wants all of that, and that day, having coffee with Kurt, he realized that Kurt, right now, would be perfect. But instead he has Ben, who is great and who is everything, but who isn't quite Kurt.

Swallowing, Blaine kisses Ben's mouth and it's messy and too wet with tears. It takes a moment too long, but Ben kisses him back.

Then, Blaine lies through his teeth. "Don't ask me about him. He was just a silly high school boyfriend, and it hurts now because it hurt so much back then."

Ben doesn't want to say yes, but he does, and then they drop into the bed and kiss each other until neither one of them is thinking about Kurt.

* * *

It's three in the morning when Blaine slips from his bed and onto the floor. He sits there with his laptop on his knees and his ears trained on the even breathing of Ben as he finds Patrick's email address and types quickly. Patrick is the only one that knows the whole story, and Blaine feels that he may be the only one who could understand just a small portion of what's going on in his heart.

Blaine ends up on the brink of tears again, but he manages to get his thoughts on the page and out of his head, convincing himself he is right. Because he knows that even if he had Kurt, if he had always had Kurt and he hadn't cheated and he'd somehow managed to make it through the rest of his senior year he wouldn't be the same person he is today. Without losing Kurt, he would have never had his heart broken, and he never would have learned how to slowly put it back together. Everything happens for a reason, right? And he is stronger and better and happier because of it.

He is nothing like seventeen year old Blaine. Seventeen year old Blaine would not be in New York working for the DAs office and _happy. _

Not that any of it matters. He just gets the thoughts out and into the ether, hitting send and then crawling back into bed.

He has Ben. He loves Ben.

* * *

Then he loses Ben. Or maybe he lets him go, he's not sure which. One day he's in love, properly, fully in love and he's so sure Ben is as well because when it's over, it is heart-breaking and angry and messy.

In the end, Ben cares more about it than Blaine, probably because he's never had his heart broken before, but maybe simply because it's really nothing like the months-long destruction Blaine went through his senior year.

They scream at each other two hot summer nights in a row and Ben accuses him of everything he isn't. Blaine stares back with empty eyes and wonders if he'll ever be as happy as he should be. Ben all but chases him out of the apartment on the third night, into the humid New York streets, and Blaine wonders where to go.

He has a credit card and cashed up parents and he has colleagues so he isn't hopeless. He sits in a diner and lingers over his food and ends up shooting Rachel Berry a message via Facebook. She's the only other person in New York he knows even though he hasn't spoken to her in half a decade.

That's how he ends up standing in the front hall of her Upper East Side apartment, dripping water onto her carpet and apologizing over and over as she looks him up and down before dragging him in for a hug.

"It's good to see you," is all she says.

She lets him talk until four in the morning and then she gives him the spare room. He hasn't mentioned Kurt at all, only Ben and Stanford, but he begs her not to tell Kurt anything even though he can't justify why. She tells him she doesn't even think Kurt knows he's in New York. And then she frowns.

Blaine goes back to his apartment two days later and stands in the hallway with his arms crossed defensively as Ben clenches his jaw, snaps a goodbye, and carries his last box of things down to the cab. Ben goes back to Memphis and Blaine only hears from him one more time: an email asking him to mail home some CDs.

And that's that. Blaine gets a smaller, dingier apartment further from work. Patrick sends him back a two-page email that basically amounts to 'I told you so' without specifying exactly what he'd told Blaine in the first place. Rachel forces Blaine to have dinner with her a few more times, making sure he is okay. And eventually he loses contact with her, forgets about Ben and throws himself, all too happily, into his work

* * *

Blaine is sitting drinking a long black and staring out the window of the Starbucks around the corner from the courts when he sees him. He chokes on his coffee and feels his heart start to hammer and his skin come alive. Beside him, Emma pats him on the back and laughs at him as she asks if he's okay.

By the time he looks back out the window Kurt is even closer, walking briskly with two women trailing him with their arms full of bags and folios. He's talking to them but of course Blaine can't hear him. He imagines it's a long list of instructions for work—materials he needs, new sketch books maybe, details for a show or a magazine spread, perhaps even details about his upcoming line of… something— or whatever excitement they have planned for today.

Blaine smiles, because from what little he gleaned from the conversation they'd had so many months ago, he knows Kurt is doing exactly what he is meant to be doing and doing it damn well.

Emma is saying something beside him and he hums in the affirmative, hoping it will do as he watches Kurt walk right by him, just across the road, and then around a corner and out of sight.

"You ready?" Emma interrupts wherever his thoughts were about to veer.

Blaine blinks at her and Emma smiles. "Trial?" she reminds him.

Blaine checks his watch and sighs because he is exhausted and it's not even 9am, but this is what he loves, and he is good at it and happy.

"Let's go do this," he says, sounding far surer of things than he is. They pick their laptops up from beneath their chairs, down the last of their coffees, and make their way back to the courthouse.

* * *

**A/N: **Yeah, not the happiest chapter, hence not posting it on my birthday. But Chapter Four, which I will post sometime in the next 24 hours is significantly more pleasant. And Five is thoroughly enjoyable, in my opinion! Keep the reviews up, I really do love reading what you all think!


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four **

**2023**

"To Blaine!" There are cheers and whoops and a scattering of applause before the background noise of the bar takes over again and everything settles. Kurt can't stop himself from looking though, scanning the sea of faces gathered around a few pushed-together tables.

An hour of mulling over his sketchbook and martinis in his usual corner and this is the first time he has bothered to look up at all. But how can he not when he once loved a boy called Blaine. The memory is fond, and when his eyes land on a familiar smile and not-so-familiar curls his heart skips a beat and he finds himself grinning.

Blaine Anderson, almost thirty, dressed in a tailored, if somewhat boring, suit, grinning and being toasted by what must be a group of co-workers. Kurt's eyes dart back to Blaine and it's second nature to search for evidence of a boyfriend, to check for a ring—and at that thought Kurt's stomach drops even though he refuses to think about it for more than a fleeting second—and then to try to work out what is going on.

There's celebration, lawyers, chatter, and faces that all look tired, but happy. Everyone is in suits, dark colors and conventional hair with briefcases and laptop bags at their feet. Kurt remembers Blaine said he was headed to the DA's office and when he does the math he realizes it was well over a year ago. He wonders if he's still there, if this has something to do with a case he's just won. He thinks so, and his heart swells with unjustified pride.

Sliding his sketchbook closed, he catches the barman's eye and nods before thinking better of it and holding two fingers up. The barman's eyebrows shoot up because Kurt's never had reason to order two of anything, but Kurt nods at him and so he shrugs and gets to work.

Kurt has to elbow a little and murmur "excuse me" several times to get close enough to Blaine to flash a brilliant smile at him, relishing the way his eyes go wide and a smile splits his face. He's on his feet in an instant and launching himself at Kurt, wrapping him up in a hug that feels perfectly warm and smells wonderful for the half second it lasts.

"Careful!" Kurt pulls away and twists, trying not to spill martini down Blaine's side.

Blaine flushes and grins, moving to take both drinks from him. "Hi!" sounding a little drunk and entirely elated.

"I hope you don't mind, I spotted you celebrating and I had to say hello." Kurt gestures at one of the two glasses and picks up his own. "For you," he says, suddenly wondering if that was weird. "I have no idea what you drink but you're obviously having a party—"

Blaine interrupts, holding the glass up and saying, "To me!" It should probably seem a bit arrogant without a back story, but it's endearing instead.

"To you," Kurt agrees and takes a sip, watching as Blaine takes a mouthful and lets it sit in his mouth before he swallows.

"Yum."

A woman's voice interrupts and Blaine turns towards her. "Blaine, honey, give us a smile," she says and a flash goes off.

When Blaine turns back to Kurt, still smiling, Kurt says, "I didn't want to intrude but I couldn't not come over. You… um… " he trails off, and another woman is reaching for Blaine and pressing a kiss to his cheek and saying "Congratulations" as Kurt continues to wonder exactly what they're celebrating.

"It was good to see you again," Kurt says, and he means it. He feels warm inside and he's pretty sure it's not just from the alcohol. But this is it, he has come over and said a quick hello, bought him a drink to celebrate… whatever… and now he feels like maybe it was a social faux pas to do so. He is struggling to regret it, however. He smiles and hoists his satchel higher on his shoulder. "I'll leave you to it."

Kurt kind of really wants to lay a hand over Blaine's forearm and press a kiss to his cheek, but he's completely sure that would be out of line. So, he smiles and offers his hand.

One more time, Blaine is distracted by someone calling his name, this time from the bar, a pretty pink drink held up in offer. Blaine waves and his eyes flick back to Kurt and he stares down at his hand.

"We should—"

The guy at the bar, again, this time holding up something that looks far too blue to taste like anything but food dye.

Blaine rolls his eyes and grabs Kurt's hand, squeezing as he takes another gulp of martini. "I want to catch up," he says quickly. "Do you want to catch up?"

Kurt swallows, which is stupid. "Of course but—"

Blaine fishes in his pocket and pulls out his wallet, offering Kurt a business card. "Email me, okay?"

Kurt takes it and stares.

"Promise me, yeah?"

Kurt continues to stare, except now it's into brown eyes that are brighter than he remembers, flecks of gold and green fringing the pupils, and Kurt is fairly sure no one could ever say no to Blaine when he's looking at them like that. He spares a moment to think, inanely, whether those eyes help Blaine with a jury. Then Kurt realizes he doesn't even know if Blaine has ever faced a jury. "Yeah, of course."

* * *

Kurt gets home that night to an over-enthusiastic dog and a new folio waiting for him with the doorman. He flicks through it while he checks his emails and then quickly types up a proposed time to meet tomorrow to his boss. Max is still skittering around his feet, dropping the occasional bark to alert Kurt to his presence, as Kurt fishes the business card out of his pocket and acknowledges that it would be entirely too eager to email Blaine tonight. He sets it down in the bowl where he keeps his keys and spare change, closes up his laptop, and determinedly turns his attention on Max.

He tires Max out, walking all the way to Central Park, half way through it, and then all the way home. When he gets back to the apartment he shuffles iTunes to his favourite jazz and cooks with a bottle of red wine for company. He's only half way through botching up a risotto when he remembers he's not a particularly good cook anymore.

He sits on the couch and flicks through the two hundred channels at his disposal. He finds nothing, but finishes his less-than-inspiring dinner. Max curls up in the curve behind his knees and in the time Kurt would usually mull over designs or sketch something outrageous, he just stares out his window and listens to jazz and New York.

He pulls his laptop to him and starts to type just before midnight. It's all pleasantries, really.

_Hi. How are you? It was good to see you! How long has it been? You're still in New York I see. Enjoying it? What are your favourite places? Are you still at the D.A.'s office? What are you up to there? Enjoying that? _

Then it's every question he can think to ask about family and friends.

_How are you parents? Been back to Ohio lately? Rachel is here in New York still, did you know? I'm sure she would love to say hi! I'm surprised she hasn't said anything on Facebook. Did you hear about Thad's second wedding? And what about Jeff? I've heard a few of the rumours! What do you know?_

He goes on and on until he's faced with a two page email that asks everything he should know (and a few things he already does, but that's besides the point) without really bringing up their past. Perhaps that should feel weird but ten years ago they talked to each other until they were hoarse and they apologized and forgave. It didn't feel any better back then, so he sees no point in saying anything now. Not when Blaine looked so happy to see him.

_What were you celebrating? _

He signs off in a dozen different ways, deleting each and grumbling at himself loudly enough to earn him a head-tilt from Max.

_It was good to see you, _

_Kurt. _

He settles on simple, unassuming, then he saves the draft and goes to bed, promising himself he won't send it for a few days.

He sends it the next day just before he goes for lunch.

* * *

Blaine emails him back with all the answers and just as many questions of his own, resulting in four pages of text that ping onto Kurt's phone early that evening. Kurt and Max sit down on the couch to read it together and Kurt is grinning by the end, grinning and happy and not over-thinking why.

_It was good to see you, too, _

_Blaine. _

* * *

And so it goes. They email until they're doing it daily. Kurt finds out all about Blaine's job at the DA's office and his steady and impressive rise in the estimations of his co-workers, the insane hours he's working, and the big case he was getting the credit for breaking open (hence the celebration). Blaine learns that Kurt left Vogue years ago and went to work for a small fashion house in the village as a designer. He also finds out that when several choice celebrities took a liking to a few of Kurt's pieces, his whole world changed and suddenly he was in demand and designing what he liked and starting his own clothes line. He now has two stores in Manhattan and more money than he thought was possible.

They both realize that they missed each other. For almost a decade, they missed the easy conversations and the mutual respect and attention. They don't say it, but they don't have to.

They keep talking about meeting for a proper drink, but the emailing is too easy. Blaine spends two weeks in Toronto for work, and then Kurt has a show to plan. They exchange numbers and start texting, and there are a half dozen almost meetings.

**Kurt to Blaine**

_I'm in a bar waiting for Liv on the corner of 20th and Park. Come by if you're close. _

**Blaine to Kurt**

_Would love to but have court for another four hours. _

And:

**Blaine to Kurt**

_I can be anywhere south of 40th for a coffee in the next three hours. Just tell me where. _

**Kurt to Blaine**

_Can't. Taylor Swift's second cousin wants me to design her a custom party dress by tonight. _

**Blaine to Kurt**

_Really?_

**Kurt to Blaine**

_No. Her name's Tilda Weston and you won't have heard of her but she's really, really important! _

Kurt finally finds the courage to ask Blaine about Ben, and it's strange, but it kind of breaks his heart when an email comes back that is too short and sounds sad and alone. Blaine not-too-subtly asks whether Kurt's attached and Kurt laughs as he tries not to come across desperate. He has to stop writing to think long and hard about when he last managed to have any sort of boyfriend, or even get laid.

He sighs and closes his laptop.

They finally manage to lock in a day to have coffee. They book it with each other a week in advance. Kurt turns down a half dozen important meetings and Blaine writes the date and time into his diary in pen circling it vigorously.

The night before, almost a month since Kurt saw him in that bar, Kurt gets a phone call.

Ten minutes later, Blaine gets a text:

**Kurt to Blaine**

_Flying to London in the morning so can't do coffee. Pretty good excuse though! _

* * *

**A/N: **I so wish I was another chapter ahead. Chapter 5 would be the perfect chapter to post on my birthday. Alas, you get four, which I think is a rather nice chapter but Chapter 5 is…better? I don't know. Anyway, thank you so much for all the feedback, it really is intriguing to see what you all think is going on in their heads while I'm writing in these sparse snippet-type instalments! Chapter 5, the good stuff, starts soon! (PS. Chapter 5 begins a spate of longer chapters, 3500-5000 each…so that's nice too!)


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: **So this is when I actually think this fic starts to pick up some pace! This is when I really fell into writing it and it came really easily and flows and has all the things I enjoy writing. So, without giving anything away… enjoy it!

* * *

**Chapter Five**

It is a last minute trip, truly last minute, and it comes up only because there's a shop off Oxford Street that is suddenly available. Kurt has been wanting it forever, and he has to move fast. It's only a month, but when he returns to New York, he has a third shop in the works and he is excitable and busier than ever.

For the month he is overseas though, every morning, Blaine wakes up to an email from Kurt, and every evening, Kurt sits down with a coffee, or a glass of wine, to an email from Blaine.

When Kurt gets back the emailing doesn't stop and the texting starts to happen more and neither one of them makes any conscious effort to examine why or stop. It feels too easy, too nice, too much like something that was missing for so long but wasn't really noticed until it was back.

* * *

It's pouring rain outside, a mid-spring storm cracking the sky open with lightning and thunder that dulls the sound of New York to a background buzz. Blaine thinks it might be the last serious storm before summer sweeps in and makes everything hot and humid and he is enjoying it accordingly. A bottle of red wine he can't really afford and his duvet waiting for him on the couch, along with a box of steaming noodles already open in his hand.

His phone vibrates on the coffee table and he glances at the clock —8pm on a Thursday—grumbling as he walks because this could only be work with a last minute emergency. It isn't even meant to be his case.

Except it isn't work. It's Kurt, and as much as he has completely avoided acknowledging that in two months of basically becoming best friends they haven't seen each other, they haven't even spoken… it's hard to deny when his phone is ringing and Kurt Hummel's name is plastered over a stock photo of a daffodil.

He stops breathing for a second and hesitates, but even though he has got a mouthful of noodles and he's not wearing any pants, he has to answer. He swallows hard as he says, "Hello?"

It's weird for about sixty seconds, Kurt hesitates and then Blaine hesitates and then it's inane questions about family and work that they've covered in emails. There's a silence that stretches too long until Blaine coughs and says, "How about this storm?"

Kurt laughs then and Blaine's toes curl in the rug on reflex, his heart stuttering because that laugh is just as melodic and breathless as ever. "Is this weird?" Kurt wonders aloud.

Laughing back at him, Blaine says, "Yeah, kind of."

There's silence, still awkward, but it feels good anyway. "I just thought you of all people would appreciate what happened at work today."

"Oh." Another beat. "What happened?"

And then they talk for hours. Blaine's meal goes cold and Kurt wanders into his own kitchen and turns off the stove, deciding he doesn't really need the soup.

It's easier than emails because Blaine can hear the inflection of Kurt's voice and Kurt can hear Blaine chuckle and they can both interrupt to ask questions and give opinions. They talk until 2 in the morning and then they hang up only because Blaine's phone warns him he's down to 5% battery.

* * *

There are more phone calls and less emails and neither one of them asks what exactly they're doing, what exactly this is. A week after the first time Blaine calls Kurt, it is still the same back and forth, recounting their days and commenting on the most inane things just because they can.

Kurt tells a story about two of his models getting caught fornicating—that's the word he uses and it makes Blaine laugh—in one of the janitor's closets at a show. Kurt tells the story because he was so mortified he had yelled at them until his cheeks were hot and they were cowering and now he is wondering if he yelled too much.

Blaine is meant to tell him they were being unprofessional. Instead, his voice just drops a little, quiet, conspiratorial: "Do you remember that time Finn walked in on us?" By this point, Blaine's most of the way through a bottle of red, sipping at it as they talk, and the clink of the bottle on the glass again makes him wonder if he's overstepping.

There is a moment of hesitation and Blaine thinks he hears Kurt's breath catch and there's a voice in his mind screaming for him to step back from this, that this is dangerous and could ruin whatever it is they've built up between them.

Then Kurt says, his own voice appropriately low, "That time at school? In the locker rooms?"

Shutting out the voice that begs, '_Don't_,' Blaine leans back into the sofa, his hand presses to his belly, hungry but warm and tight. Up over his chest as he shakes his head and replies, "No, the time before that."

"Oh my god," Kurt's voice comes out breathless and high and Blaine can hear it. "When he came home from football practice early? And he walked in…" he trails off.

"That's the one." Blaine blushes at the memory. At least, he thinks it's a blush. "You had me completely naked and your brother must have copped an eyeful."

Kurt scoffs at him. "Finn has seen plenty of naked men before. I'm just not sure he was ready to see one that…" he trails off and then coughs. "That naked, I guess." He pauses and Blaine can still hear him breathing. "It was gay sex Blaine."

Blaine patently ignores his half-hard dick because that is creepy and a little bit confusing. He jokes, "Finn was so not ready for gay sex."

"I don't think my brother will ever be ready for gay sex," Kurt laughs but his voice remains caught and high.

Blaine bites his lip for a moment. "That was the first time you sucked me off, wasn't it?'

"Yeah," breathless, why does he have to be breathless? "You made me," Kurt accuses. "You _begged_." Why does he have to sound like he's remembering?

Blaine doesn't mean to say it but he does: "Can you blame me?"

"You still really…" Kurt trails off, whatever he was going to say dying on his lips as he seems to realize what he's talking about and with whom he is talking about it. "Wow," he says, and then coughs to clear his throat. "This is really inappropriate, I'm sorry I—"

Cutting him off with a laugh, Blaine rakes a hand through his hair and stumbles over his words. "Yeah. But—I mean, it was, it is. But yeah." Kurt is laughing at him, voice high and melodic again. "You taught me lot. About myself. I never thanked you for that."

Silence stretches and Blaine wonders if he's being even more out of line now than he has been for the entire conversation.

"For our relationship?" Kurt asks.

"Yeah. It was… it was a highlight."

Kurt all but whispers, "I'm glad," and then, "Me too."

There's another stretched silence but they can hear each other breathing and would both swear they can hear each other smiling. Then Kurt makes his excuses and hangs up.

That should be the end of it. It should actually be a good thing, a step in the right direction between two men who are fast becoming close but who need to lose some of the baggage from a long forgotten time. It was a decade ago! Blaine has had a dozen men since then, and if the glimpses into Kurt's sex life are anything to go by, Kurt has had more than twice that.

That shouldn't make him feel jealous. And it shouldn't make him feel turned on. He thinks about Emma, one of the other attorneys in his office, one of his very good friends. They talk about sex stuff and relationship stuff, and it never turns him on.

He can only tell himself so many times it's because she's a woman and Kurt's a very attractive gay man. Friends is all they are, and he has no right to be sitting there with tented sweat pants after less than a minute of anecdote that was more funny than sexy.

Sure, it was an anecdote about him, but it was ten years ago with his now-friend so, no. He presses the heel of his hand into his crotch, hoping to quell his erection, but only moans at how good it feels. He swallows the last of his wine and stares at a nothing point on the wall.

It can't really hurt, can it? Getting off now, with Kurt gone and alcohol in his blood and that perfectly imperfect memory of sloppy mouths and first-time blowjobs so fresh in his brain.

He has, in the past, indulged in fantasies about judges and colleagues and random men on the street. Guys at the gym and at the club and in restaurants. There have never been ramifications.

And he's seen Kurt naked. He's seen Kurt coming. He's seen him wrapped around him and arching for him and getting him off.

Without any further deliberation, but already anticipating the tell-tale twinge of guilt that makes the fantasy slip to some nameless, faceless man, Blaine slides his hands down and slips his pants to mid-thigh.

His cock is hard and red and it bounces from the confines of his underwear to lay heavy against his belly. There's pre-come and an ache that usually takes him a few minutes to build up to. With his fingers wrapped tight around, he moans low and deep and lets his eyes flutter closed.

"You just had to bring up the sex, didn't you?" he murmurs to himself, picturing Kurt. Long, lean, pale Kurt, naked and on his knees with wide blue eyes and his fist around Blaine's cock.

Vision flickering he works his hand and tries to keep Kurt eighteen and inexperienced and his boyfriend. But it's too difficult and, fighting the heat, he pulls his shirt over his head with his spare hand and twists his wrist expertly just below the head of his cock.

With two dozen different conquests under his belt, almost-thirty year old Kurt would be so very good at this, assuming he wanted to be. Blaine is sure Kurt could just lay himself out and get taken, let men come off the perfection of his body, the tightness and the fluidity that Blaine remembers too well.

He's panting as he strokes, trying and not trying to imagine just how Kurt does this now. Naked and on his knees between Blaine's legs and stroking him with deft, talented fingers and a wicked grin. Eyes that know and judge and calculate and are still so blue. Stubble. Blaine wonders if Kurt ever gives head with a few day's growth and then he whines at the phantom rub of whiskers on the insides of his thighs as Kurt mouths over his balls.

Kurt's hands—Blaine hasn't had the chance to look at them in ten years but he will have slightly longer fingers, thinner and more nimble from too many hours with pencils and thread and a sewing machine. Callouses maybe, and long nails to punctuate the burn left by his scratching cheeks. Strong wrists.

"Oh god," he mumbles, wishing he had lube and then curling over himself and letting saliva drip from his mouth to his dick, deciding very quickly that's something he wants to see Kurt do for him. He wants, so desperately, to know whether the inside of Kurt's mouth tastes the same.

He wants so much more.

He loses track of his own hands, just letting them pull and squeeze however feels good and closes his eyes and allows himself this one indulgent fantasy. He refuses to waste it. Skipping from Kurt's hands on his dick to his mouth, fucked red and open and Kurt would be over the embarrassment of saliva and come dripping down his chin by now, he must be, and he'll chase the wet sounds of flesh moving together instead of trying not to giggle.

How many inches can Kurt take now? All of them? On his knees and with his own hand between his legs while he hollows his cheeks and watches Blaine's face as he sinks all the way down and blocks his own throat. Blaine never got to experience that with Kurt, but now maybe dozens of other people have.

_More. _

Blaine would pull him up, onto his lap and fuck into him from below so hard. Have Kurt straddling his hips and riding him as they kissed until they were light headed and their orgasms took them by surprise.

Kurt on his hands and knees, getting fucked from behind hard enough that he ends up on his belly, the friction of the bed against his dick making him writhe and push back and beg. "Oh god, please Blaine, _please. _Like that, fuck me like that, Blaine."

Coming when Blaine lets him and then going lax while Blaine doesn't stop, twisting around just enough to capture Blaine's mouth is a messy kiss and beg against his lips, "Come for me. Come inside me."

Blaine moans, his hand moving hard, fast and desperate over his cock, fingers slipping down and toying with his hole, pushing saliva inside with just the barest press of his middle finger.

Kurt pushing him back against blue satin sheets in some nameless hotel and stretching him open on his fingers, making him beg and writhe just like he did the first time back in Ohio, on Blaine's bed, except this time it would be on purpose. Finger after finger and kitten licks to the head of his cock and the crease of his thigh and watching him, knowing him so well he can read the angles of his body without even thinking about it.

Still stretching him out, and not just so he's ready for Kurt to slide deep inside with one fluid thrust, but teasing him so when he does pull Blaine's hips down the bed and fucks into him hard, Blaine comes with a surprised shout, dick untouched and pulsing as Kurt just kisses him through it and thrusts deeper and deeper.

Come kissed off Blaine's belly and into his mouth and Kurt bent over him, fucking into him, deep and slow and languid until Blaine stops shivering with the over-stimulation and telling him it's too much and pleading for a break and his voice starts breaking over the words—

_Keep going. Don't stop. Fuck me. Don't ever stop. _

He's saying those words and he's saying them loud and clear in his empty apartment and panting for breath, his hips fucking up off the couch into his hand and a finger inside him, a placeholder for so much more, but god it all feels so fucking good.

He stumbles onto the memory, so stark, and Kurt's voice crashes through reality, whispered so close to his ear just like the last time they fucked, back in Ohio, thinking it was nothing special, just another chance to get off together.

"Come for me."

And Blaine strains, hips twisting and sweat dripping from his temple to his chin, lips bitten red and eyes squeezed shut as he imagines Kurt all over him, inside him, his, and comes saying his name. "Kurt, Kurt, _Kurt."_ It twists through him, hot and reckless and the pulse of electricity down his spine, in his blood, makes him gasp and arch higher.

Watching as his cock throbs in his hand and he spills in white streaks that stretch high up his belly and onto his chest, his ass clenching and rocking into it as he shoots over his fingers and drips white through the coarse dark hair at the base of his dick. He holds onto the delicious heat of it for as long as he can, taut and breathless and begging the feeling to never end, chasing the images of someone naked and perfect and so utterly not his until Kurt disappears and he collapses back onto the couch with a sigh.

He still doesn't quite feel guilty. And he doesn't think he should. He loved Kurt once and tonight there were mutual thanks for everything they'd shared. Kurt will never know and there's no harm done and, as he starts to smile, he thinks that may well have been one of the best orgasms he's had in a long time.

He stretches, feeling his muscles tense and unknot and his skin feel too tight and wonderful all at once. Rocking to his feet, grinning and feeling blissed out, he pads barefoot to the bathroom to wipe the come from his chest.

Once he's done that, still grinning at how good his orgasm was, he walks back out into the lounge. He hears the vibration of his phone. It's late now, too late for Kurt to be calling and by the time he is standing over the coffee table he's convinced himself it will be work.

It's Kurt.

And now there is guilt, just a jolt of it right up through him. He has that irrational thought of '_Oh god what if he knows?' _and then he shakes it off.

He flicks his phone to answer and does his best to sound normal. "Hi Kurt."

Kurt's voice comes back to him, quiet and intense, just his name, just, "Blaine."

They miss a beat and Blaine can't quite bring himself to ask why Kurt would be calling him after midnight when they only hung up an hour before. Then there's another missed beat and Blaine's about to call his name and make sure the line hasn't dropped out.

"Do you ever think of me?"

Blaine's mind flashes hot and fast to every single fantasy that has flickered behind his eyes in the last hour. The visions and tastes and smells, and hardly any of it means anything really, because he doesn't know Kurt anymore and it can't be what Kurt means. He rolls the phrase over in his mind once, twice, trying to dissect what Kurt is asking.

_Do you ever think of me?_

He says, "Of course," without really meaning to.

He thinks he hears Kurt suck in a breath a little too quickly. Not quite a gasp, but something. And then Kurt laughs, light and happy.

"It's so ridiculous that we still haven't actually managed to catch up in person," Kurt says. "I would like to."

Eyes falling closed, Blaine tries to imagine Kurt right now. Comfortable in pyjamas and lounging somewhere in his apartment, calling him and wanting to meet up.

"If you'd still like to?" Kurt's question interrupts his thoughts.

"Yeah."

Then Kurt starts to ramble, suddenly nervous it seems. "I just mean we could try. If you're not too busy. And I'm not too busy. We could try," he clears his throat. "We could try being friends."

Blaine's mind is somewhere else and his heart is beating too fast. He doesn't mean to ask, but he so, so does. "Do you want to come over for dinner?"

* * *

**A/N: **Does that count as a cliffhanger? I'm never quite sure. Also: yay porn, right? Never have I ever written proper solo-anyone! So this was weird for me. Hope you enjoyed it, thank you so, so much for reviewing! They are making me so happy that I wrote this!


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

_Yes_.

Of course the answer is yes and Kurt is agreeing and saying tomorrow before he realises tomorrow is _tomorrow_. Blaine is then saying that his Friday night is miraculously free and he is saying seven and they're both hanging up too quickly.

It's approximately eighteen and a half hours of holding his breath, and Kurt doesn't think about it because this is such a bad idea. He doesn't think about it so hard that it's after six pm the next day and he's got pangs in his back from where he's been leaning over the drafting table in his office for too many hours and pangs in his stomach because he hasn't eaten since breakfast. When he looks in the mirror, he realizes he needs a haircut and a day at the spa and that there are red indents across the bridge of his nose from his glasses. But it's after six so he pushes all of that to the side and then he's scrambling.

He hasn't even planned a proper outfit. _What is wrong with him?_ He doesn't have time for another shower, and as he tries to get his hair to sit as perfectly as it used to, he realizes he never got around to shaving this morning. Or yesterday. The still-in-vogue slightly-unkempt look it is then, he concedes, with a roll of his eyes. He gives up, rakes his fingers through his hair and then down over his faintly-rough chin. He pulls on his favourite worn-thin jeans and a dark blue Henley and wonders if Blaine will know him at all, wonders whether he will like him like this. Not that it's important, he thinks, because this isn't a date, it can't be. It's simply two people catching up to reminisce over the old days and home and their friends.

_This isn't a date. _

He takes flowers, though. He spends a ridiculous amount on a bunch of short-stemmed red and yellow roses because the florist on the corner has them sitting out front and that's a sign, isn't it? It must be.

_This isn't a date._

And then he has flowers and worn jeans and a dark blue Henley. Really, he should have grabbed a bottle of wine.

Before his brain has time to catch up, is knocking on the door of the fifth floor apartment, ten minutes early, and Blaine is opening it with damp, curly hair, a tea-towel over his shoulder and glasses.

"When did you get glasses?"

"God, I remember those.," Blaine says at the same time, reaching for the flowers and letting his fingers brush over the petals of one of the roses. Kurt smiles and opens his mouth to babble and blush and—

_This is so a date. _

"I'm going to London on Wednesday." Kurt blurts it out and that's not the plan.

_What is he doing? What is he thinking? This is not a good plan. God, what is he doing? _

Blaine—beautiful, stunning, bare-foot—looks bemused for a brief second, his brow creasing and then he sighs because he'd known this had seemed too straightforward. The same grin he used to save especially for Kurt slides easily across his lips and he steps back, tilting his head to usher Kurt through the door. When Kurt has his back to him, he asks, "London, England?" prompting for more.

"I can't turn it down." He tries to remember what Blaine knows and what Blaine doesn't. "The London store still needs a lot of work and I was planning another quick trip over anyway. But that's not… New gen Vivienne Westwood wants me to work with them on a bunch of things. Fashion lines and shows and it's not just some shitty job. It's a collaboration. I still don't know how I got it but it's an insane opportunity." He pauses. "I found out on Wednesday."

Blaine's eyes are wide and he hasn't quite managed to pull himself back together. His thoughts shift back and forth between this beautiful man standing on his doorstep with a bunch of roses and a gorgeous smile to that same man leaving, again. Blaine hadn't even realized this was a date. But it is, except for the bit where Kurt is leaving right after. "How long?"

He watches Kurt bite his bottom lip and his fingers itch to press against the soft redness there. His mouth goes dry when next, he realizes he wants his teeth there instead of Kurt's.

"It's a six month contract."

They're standing in the hallway of Blaine's small apartment and the front door is still open. Blaine notices and pushes it closed slowly. "Six months?"

Kurt lets out a breath. "I'm hoping it'll be more like a year. We could have a line out for Milan next spring."

Blaine pauses and he feels hurt to have manifested hope and then feel it slipping away. "You probably didn't need to blurt it out like that."

"I just—"

Blaine waves it off and Kurt thinks for a moment that there are tears gathering in Blaine's eyes. And it hurts, god it hurts, because Kurt didn't think further than the moment and he refused to acknowledge that this could ever be anything more than emails and texts and maybe Blaine has been on another page the whole time.

Then Kurt remembers he brought Blaine roses and feels his stomach knot.

"It's fine. We're having dinner," Blaine says and then he blinks once, slowly.

Kurt can hear Blaine's breathing. He can hear every catch and shortening and the moment he stops, holds, and then breathes once deeply and smiles. "Anyway, congratulations," he says and he means it. "You should have told me we were celebrating. I would have bought champagne!"

Kurt laughs and Blaine moves in and presses his mouth to Kurt's cheek and it feels electric. Soft lips across scratching stubble and Blaine guesses that answers that question. He thinks he feels Kurt's eyelashes flutter and then he pulls back. It's over far too soon.

Following Blaine down the hall and into the open-plan living space, Kurt takes in where Blaine lives, the art on the walls, the throw pillows on the couch, the bookcases and lamps, and the delicate, subtly masculine touches to it all. It reminds him a little of Blaine's room back in Ohio.

"It smells delicious," Kurt says as he turns towards the kitchen where Blaine's busying himself over the stove.

"Any excuse to cook," Blaine says, reaching for a cupboard and thinking perhaps Kurt is watching the lines of his stretched out body. His emotions are a mess and his thoughts are worse, but when he peeks in the oven and the full force of the aromas hit him he thinks tonight will be fine.

Kurt has slipped onto one of the stools across the kitchen counter and is watching him, waiting for him to turn back before he fixes him with a stare and he is so judging him. "Cooking? Really?"

Blaine flushes and remembers suddenly the half dozen disasters at home-cooked date-night meals he'd delivered when he was seventeen. "I've learned how, believe it or not."

"It smells like it." Kurt licks his lips and nods when Blaine offers him wine. "When did you learn?"

They slip easily into conversation. They've had so much practice via email and they've always been able to talk about anything and everything, their interests and passions running close enough together for there to be lots of crossover but far enough apart for there to be intrigue. At least that seems not to have changed very much.

Except now they can see each other and there are obvious questions. Blaine got his glasses almost as soon as he got to Stanford, too many hours of reading giving him headaches and a quick prescription. Kurt doesn't think to mention his since he only started needing them last year and only when he sketches. Kurt comments on Blaine's hair and Blaine laughs and says Kurt was early and that usually it would be dry.

"I meant the curls," Kurt says and resists the urge to reach across the table and tug on one just to watch it bounce back into place.

"Boyfriend—well not a boyfriend—a friend at law school hated the gel. And he didn't hide it. Actually, he made me wash it out on more than one occasion until I worked out how to tame it and—"

Kurt interrupts him. "I like the curls."

Blaine blushes and shrugs and mentally thanks Patrick for one more thing. "What about you? How has your skin not aged a day in ten years?"

It's blatantly flirtatious and Kurt laughs and sips his wine and then rubs a hand over his chin. "Lots of hard work, I assure you," he admits, but Blaine just raises his eyebrows a little and looks him up and down, still incredulous. "And yes, I kind of forgot to shave."

Blaine laughs and shakes his head. "I didn't mean I minded. I just never would have guessed you to—"

"Dress down?" Kurt shifts slightly, settled in his body. "I probably would have dressed up a little, I'll admit. And these pants are still tailored—"

"I can tell." _Wow Blaine, smooth. _

"I have to dress up so much for work now that when I'm not working, the me you'll encounter has kind of become the dressed down version of myself. If that makes any sort of sense. And time got away from me today, I was at home sketching, and this was all I had." He's watching Blaine with sharp eyes. "Sorry if it wasn't the Kurt you were expecting." He doesn't sound sorry at all though and Blaine's smile just grows wider.

"You look good," Blaine says simply, and then diverts the conversation elsewhere.

* * *

Swallowing the last mouthful of wine from his glass and laughing at Kurt's story, Blaine turns and checks the duck once more and then rubs his hands together, turning back to Kurt. "Ready for first course?"

Kurt grins. "There are courses?"

"Nothing special." Blaine still has that air of self-deprecation about him, the flush to his cheeks, the small smile, and the dipped gaze. He looks ten years younger in spite of his curly hair and glasses and the way his face creases just a little differently when he smiles.

First course is simple pork rice paper rolls, tightly wrapped and sitting on two plates in the fridge, ready to go. They sit across from each other at Blaine's small dining room table and there's more wine and no cutlery. "Fingers?" Kurt asks, strangely pleased with the idea. Blaine nods, watching as Kurt dips a rice paper roll into the bowl of homemade sauce and takes a bite, very aware of Blaine's eyes on him, waiting for a reaction.

He moans around the mouthful because it really is good and Blaine deserves to know it, and once he's swallowed, he starts to pick apart the rolled up mix of ingredients and dips his little finger in the sauce to taste again. "All from scratch?" he asks as he dips again.

Blaine nods. "It's easier than you would think," he says, and then takes a mouthful of his own.

The conversation flows again and Kurt has to stop himself from licking clean the little bowl of peanut sauce once he's finished.

Blaine tops up his wine and then tells him to stay where he is as he clears the plates and crosses to the kitchen.

As he moves, Kurt watches him, the talk lulling for the first time since they settled and Kurt wonders. Then he smells and starts to salivate and tries to see across the room and into the kitchen. It's duck and ginger and pepper, and the aroma of it alone is amazing.

He says so and Blaine chuckles and when he comes back his glasses are perched on his head, in amongst the curls, and the tea towel is over his arm. He slides the plate in front of Kurt with a mumbled, "Voila."

It is _good_. It's so good it makes them stop talking altogether once Kurt has made sure Blaine knows it's good. Rich and intoxicating and the second bottle of wine is a heavier, drier white that melds well with the lemon and ginger of the duck and steamed vegetables.

Their eyes flicker up at each other, smiles exchanged, soft music in the background, and Kurt's not quite sure when it started. He hates to be getting full, sated, slowing down and picking the meat from the bones with his fork.

Blaine's fork clinks as he leaves it across his plate. When Kurt looks up, Blaine holds his gaze and asks, "Why did you say yes to dinner if you knew you were leaving?"

Kurt swallows and his gaze drops and he doesn't have a real answer. "I didn't really realize it was a date."

Watching him, Blaine's brow creases and then he relaxes. "We never said it was a date."

"It feels like one," Kurt admits.

"It does." Except dates lead to relationships and sex and love and happily ever after. "You brought me flowers and then you told me you were going to London."

"I know," Kurt admits, his voice small and careful, and it makes Blaine's heart ache. They flick back into normal conversation too easily, sipping their wine and watching each other and feeling far too happy about nothing in particular.

* * *

**A/N: **Forgive me, I didn't realize how short this chapter was until I read through it. And just more build! Le sigh. Chapter 7 is a doozy though, so stay tuned and keep reviewing! You are making me so very happy I wrote a multi-chaptered fic!


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

There's cheesecake for dessert, proper New York cheesecake, and as Blaine cuts two generous slices and sets them on plates, Kurt asks if there's more wine.

It occurs to Blaine that they are about to start on their third bottle, and the alcohol might be contributing to the excited buzz in his blood, but when he checks the time he also realizes they've been talking for over three hours. In the fridge there's raspberry sauce in a jug and another bottle of white wine and Blaine brings both to the table. Still, Kurt is watching him with his bright blue eyes.

"Cheesecake?" he asks.

"I remember a certain fondness," Blaine teases back and Kurt giggles.

"Did you make it?"

Blaine slides into his seat and hums his pleasure around a mouthful before drowning his slice in bright red sauce. "No one makes cheesecake in New York, Kurt."

Kurt grins and imagines Blaine taking him by the hand, showing him the cake shop he bought it from and telling him the story of how he came to find it. It is perfectly delicious and the sauce is just the right amount of tart and sweet.

"I made that though," Blaine says, motioning to the jug and Kurt licks the back of his finger where the sauce has dripped.

There's more comfortable silence.

"Kurt." Blaine waits for him to finish dissolving the cake between his tongue and the roof of his mouth and swallow. "Why did you say yes to dinner?"

Kurt takes another mouthful of cheesecake and lets it dissolve even more slowly on his tongue, indulging in the taste and then sucking his spoon clean as he debates.

"Kurt…" Blaine is waiting though.

"I'm trying to work that out myself." It's a starkly honest answer and relays the fact that Kurt hasn't thought this through at all, that he's unsure. He takes another bite. "Why did you ask me?" Kurt asks, genuinely curious.

"That's unfair. I've been asking you all night why you came."

Kurt holds his gaze. "I guess I still don't know how to say no to you."

Time stops around them, stutters, and then kicks back in when their eyes slip away from each other. Neither one of them knows what this is or what to do with it. Neither one of them walked into this dinner tonight thinking seduction or relationship or date of anything like that. They were far too busy _not_ thinking it.

"Did you want to say no?" Blaine asks.

"Of course not. I wanted to come. Of course I did, Blaine." And then somehow they're touching. Without giving it any conscious thought, Kurt has reached across the space between them and caught one of Blaine's hands in his.

The realization of it comes slowly to Blaine and his nerves feel sluggish, his brain processing the simplicity of the touch, just skin on skin, not intimate or unwelcome or leading to anything. But Kurt is touching him and not briefly, not fleetingly, he's holding on and suddenly it all rushes back through Blaine and he never, ever wants to let go.

Not ever. This is it. Kurt is it. He always was.

"You broke my heart when you cheated on me."

Kurt says it so simply, without any accusation or regret, and it's too plain a fact to hurt like it used to. "I know," Blaine tells him, holding his gaze. "I'm sorry."

Kurt waves it off, the corner of his mouth curving up, and he shakes his head and it's nothing like every other time Blaine has apologized for this. "Don't be sorry it… it happened," Kurt waits for it to sink in for both of them. "We did our sorrys and regrets back then. We said we'd be friends…" What he does regret is not hanging on to Blaine a little tighter, even when he thought he hated him. He wonders what would have happened if they'd stayed friends.

"It hurt too much," Blaine admits, his throat feeling tight. "I broke my own heart, I think."

Kurt stares at him, unreadable, but so beautiful. He takes another mouthful and Blaine tries hard not to watch his lips.

"I think it worked out well. Not the bit where I lost you forever," Blaine hastens to add. "But overall, I'm better now. Happier." And it's true. "I wasn't happy even when I was with you and that's nothing to do with you. I just hadn't finished growing up. Hadn't worked out what I wanted."

"And now you know?" Kurt asks.

Nodding, Blaine sounds wistful despite everything he's said, "We were eighteen…" Then he shakes his head and puts his spoon down on his plate and picks up his glass of wine, his eyes slipping past Kurt to a spot on the wall.

"Do you not want to talk about it?" Kurt wonders.

"I do, just not now. And not because I need to work out what happened or whose fault it was. We were young and stupid and I fucked up something special—"

Kurt interrupts, "_We_ fucked up something special."

Blaine doesn't argue. He doesn't see any point. "Anyway, now we're almost thirty—"

Kurt's eyes snap to his and he looks stricken. "Oh god, don't say that!" he manages to scoff.

However, Blaine is staring at him, a little too intensely, too much going on behind his eyes. "And we are having a lovely dinner. Like… as grown ups…" he trails off and Kurt fights the implication. _This is so a date. _

He has to say it again because it's been on loop in the back of his mind for hours. "I'm leaving on Wednesday, though. For a year."

Blaine snaps, "You don't have to keep telling me," and then he softens when he sees a flash of hurt in Kurt's eyes. He hasn't seen that for so long and he hates seeing it now, just like he did back then. "I understood the first time and I didn't slam the door in your face."

"Did you want to?"

"No. I think…" The intensity is so strong, the underlying current of wanting each other, of wanting more than a fling or settling to be friends and it's so blatant in the space between them. But Kurt is leaving for a year, and Blaine drops his gaze first and denies the obvious once more. "I think it's time I started cleaning up."

* * *

Kurt insists on helping even though there are only a half dozen plates and hardly anything from cooking. They bring the bottle of wine over and once more slip into laughing and joking with each other, perhaps standing too close at the sink as Blaine washes and Kurt dries. They both take far too long on such simple tasks because they have no idea what comes next.

It feels perfect and domestic and makes Kurt remember how he imagined his life in New York when he was seventeen. They laugh and touch without meaning to, and then very much meaning to, hips bumping, dishes passed from one to the other with the fleeting brush of fingertips and eyes on each other's hands.

It's a small kitchen and the contact is inevitable. The wine slows Blaine's mind enough that he presses against the warmth of Kurt's body a second before he pulls back, and it makes Kurt brazen, makes him settle a hand on Blaine's hip as he reaches around to slide the plates into their place in the cupboard.

They get tangled up, reaching for something or other, and Blaine's backed against the counter with Kurt so close and a hand against the wood beside his hip. He should slide out and laugh it off, he will, but Kurt's other hand snaps up and brackets his body there. The only way out is to ask or by force and Kurt's watching him, waiting for one or the other.

The seconds stretch and Blaine watches Kurt's gaze flicker from his eyes to his lips and then back up. A shaky breath, he hears it and feels it against his face, the radiant heat of every inch of Kurt's body meeting his in the inch of air between them and ricocheting back and surely Kurt can feel it, too? How can he stand it? Blaine wants to sink to the floor and take Kurt with him and never surface for air again.

He might kiss him, he thinks. He might kiss him and ignore everything that could go wrong and just drown himself in this gorgeous, perfect man that is somehow still everything to him.

What a ridiculous thought.

Kurt's voice, delicate and whispered just between them, stops Blaine as he's leaning in, giving in. "I said yes to dinner because if I'd said no I don't think I would have ever forgiven myself."

And then Blaine does kiss him. Slow and lush and so frighteningly tangible, the slide of his lips over the curve of Kurt's, starting just off centre like they always do and slipping into an angle and a press that feels like heaven. The nudge of noses into cheeks and the flutter of eyelashes as Blaine sees Kurt close his eyes and then follows suit. The softest shift of Kurt's mouth on his, the lightest caress, and Blaine returns it in kind and then again, soft lips moving against soft lips and then the scratch of stubble across his clean-shaven chin. He feels his stomach swoop and he swears he hasn't felt like this in a decade.

Another kiss, a little harder, trying to see if he'll wake up, and Kurt makes the most beautiful noise at the back of his throat, the one that will always utterly undo Blaine.

Blaine's hands fly to Kurt's face, fingers of one into his hair, his other splaying across cheek and jaw and Kurt's hands at Blaine's hips, pulling him in that last inch and feeling him from head to toe against him. He makes that noise again, but louder, and Blaine's mouth opens to swallow it and kiss him some more. Meeting Kurt's tongue and teasing, licking, tasting the same boy from a lifetime ago, but different, and feeling every cell reignite with him.

Hands skirting up Blaine's sides, feeling out tight muscles and hot skin beneath the fabric, Kurt can't stop himself from pushing him back more firmly against the counter. He fights the instinct to wedge a thigh between Blaine's legs and chase even more, because Blaine's mouth is enough. Blaine's mouth on his, taking and giving and kissing him for all he's worth and Kurt moans again and feels Blaine fist his hair and angle his mouth and pull at his lips with his teeth.

Kurt wants desperately to kiss down Blaine's neck, at his jaw, across his cheeks and his temples and _everywhere_. But Blaine seems to want it just as much, his hand in Kurt's hair pulling, making him move and arch so Blaine can get his lips on the angle of Kurt's jaw, skimming, kissing, licking. Tonguing across the stubble and moaning, sucking hard enough to make Kurt gasp, "_Blaine_."

Blaine's teeth nip and his lips kiss at the spot and it's just one spot but he wants to try everywhere and, _oh god_, Kurt wants him to. But Kurt wants him kissing his mouth right now and finds his lips and takes until they're both dizzy with it and panting for air, pressing forehead to forehead and refusing to open their eyes as they nuzzle close and safe and warm.

Blaine's voice is easily the most gorgeous thing Kurt has ever heard, teasing and laughing and happy, so damn happy, and the way he says his name, twice, trying to regain some semblance of a grounding as he pulls their lips apart. "Kurt," he swallows and Kurt opens his eyes, just so he can press the most chaste of kisses to Blaine's Adam's apple and feel the movement when he inevitably swallows and says it again. "_Kurt_."

Hands on Kurt's hips, shaking so much Kurt can feel the tremors, Blaine's voice still happy, breathless and _god this is perfect_. "What are we doing?" Blaine asks.

* * *

**A/N: **Oh I think I am more proud of this kiss than any other klaine kiss I've written! The slow burn and the build, I used to write UST all the time but in this fandom that's no call for it to be so damn innocent and then there was and it was amazing! Anyway…yes…a good chapter, right? Thank you so much again for all the kind words! I am loving the constant stream of feedback! I love reading and rereading everything you guys have to say!


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight**

Kurt's breath comes out half-laugh, half-sigh, and he buries his face in the crook of Blaine's neck once again, pressing his mouth there, and then kissing and licking as though he is trying to get a taste. He mumbles, "I don't know," and wishes he didn't have to think about it. If he was a little bit drunker he could just topple into bed and not have to answer Blaine right now. "I don't know, but I want to." He pulls back and places a hand over each of Blaine's cheeks, staring hard at him.

It's been a decade and then just friends and now everything, _everything, _all so agonisingly slow and yet too fast to keep track of. And London, goddamn London. If it weren't for London, this would be a date and there would be one hot, hungry kiss to end the night and leave them both wanting. More dates and then some important discussions and more kisses, as many kisses as they wanted, and sex, lots of sex, and then weekends together. Eventually, maybe, they would get bored with so much sex (though Kurt doubts it) and take the leap, move in together and find it too easy and… _so long as we both shall live_.

London.

"I don't know, Blaine." He kisses him on the mouth and almost, _almost_, falls back into it. "But if we stop because we're scared, I'll hate myself for it."

"Kurt, I…" Blaine's eyes flicker down to Kurt's mouth and then back up, his hands on Kurt's waist tightening, flexing against him and Kurt hopes.

Kurt watches and sees everything he's thinking reflected back in the hunger, the hesitation, in Blaine's eyes. They're tipsy on wine and lust and the magnetism that they've both felt since that day on the stairs at Dalton. But they're both also more sober now than they've ever been.

Being almost thirty will do that.

It will beg the question: What if we don't?

"Please say yes," Kurt says, his fingers tracing the lines of Blaine's face just in case Blaine is about to say no. He feels the sting of tears threatening, and he's not sad, but god this feels like a moment—_the moment. _He swallows hard and Blaine's fingers stretch further, from the dip of Kurt's back a little lower to the curve of his ass. "Please _mean_ yes."

"Always." It's so fierce and so true and Blaine captures his mouth just as Kurt gasps, kissing him as deeply as he knows how, dragging him in close with his hands, sliding to grab at Kurt's ass and hauling him forward against him and grinding and—oh, _yes_—that's the heady, dizzying feel of them _together. _Hip to hip, chest to chest, mouth to mouth, and everything caught between. Their cocks are growing hard and obvious where they're not letting an inch of air disrupt the contours of their pressed-close bodies.

"God." Blaine kisses below Kurt's ear. "Always." And then again. "Always." He scratches his teeth down the column of Kurt's neck and says his name. "Kurt."

Knees almost giving out, Kurt's fingers twist into Blaine's hair to hold him steady and look at him again. _Gorgeous_. "No regrets, okay?" He needs to be sure that whatever happens after tonight they get to keep now.

"Nope." Blaine kisses him again, mouth curling into a broad smile against Kurt's, and Kurt is about to ask why when Blaine pulls back to nuzzle at his cheek, his smile still obvious. "No regrets," he reiterates, "Just love." He pulls back and batts his eyelashes. His smile just keeps growing and Kurt groans at how terrible that was, but then giggles in spite of himself.

And just like that, the weight of the moment shifts and they're both giggling and chasing each other's mouths for quick, teasing kisses, one after the other, until Kurt's teeth are catching Blaine's bottom lip and biting, tugging, and Blaine's hips rock up against Kurt's.

Their mouths break apart and their hands race for the waistbands of each other's pants, their foreheads leaning together as they try to see down to the mess of shaking fingers and material.

Blaine is the first one to find success, fingers tugging the button of Kurt's jeans free and then making quick work of the zipper. He lets out a victorious 'whoop' as his hands slide under the waistband and push down, the worn-thin denim dropping to below Kurt's knees and leaving him there in—

"_Kurt._" Blaine's knees crack loud against the floorboards as he slides down in the space between the counter and Kurt's body to stare. "These are…" he trails off as he dares to trace the outline of Kurt's cock with his fingertips. "When did you start wearing briefs?"

Kurt's eyes snap shut and he remembers getting dressed and not paying anywhere near the usual amount of attention to his underwear, and certainly not the careful deliberation he used when he was seventeen and knew Blaine was going to see them.

They're grey and small. He bought them because they hung low on his hips and accentuated everything, and he threw them on tonight because they look fine under jeans and were clean and _good god, _Blaine really does make him forget himself.

He's blushing and swallowing hard because when he looks down, Blaine is on his knees, mouth open and eyes fixed on where he's got his fingers shifting by small degrees over the fabric and around Kurt's dick, watching the outline and licking his lips, looking up and saying with near-comical reverence, "You never ever used to wear briefs."

Kurt laughs lightly and threads his fingers back through Blaine's curls. "You never used to leave your hair ungelled," he teases, breath catching at the end as Blaine's hand moves to cup him through his underwear and his breath puffs hot against the crease of Kurt's thigh.

This time Blaine doesn't look up. "Do you really like my hair curly?"

Tugging at Blaine's hair again, feeling the softness around his fingers, Kurt is about to agree but his voice fails, slipping into a whine as Blaine presses his hot, open mouth around the base of Kurt's cock, heat and wetness seeping through the cotton. "Blaine," Kurt calls and tugs again, sharper. "Come up here."

Sighing heavily and feeling light-headed, Blaine sucks once again and promises himself he'll have his mouth around Kurt's cock properly before the night is over. He rocks back and up to his feet and when he stumbles, Kurt catches him by the hips and pushes him back against the counter again. They kiss and Kurt moans into it, rubbing up against Blaine's crotch as though he can't help it.

Blaine doesn't even notice the sneak of Kurt's hand between them, deft and searching and undoing his jeans. Kurt kisses up his jaw, wet and sucking, and stops at his ear.

"What do you want to do?" Kurt asks. It's all that matters, all he cares about, and he's never like that with anybody and he knows it.

"Everything,' Blaine breathes out. "Everything or anything or—"

Kurt gets Blaine's shirt off in one quick move, dragging it up and over his head and throwing it over the counter towards the dining table. He lifts Blaine's glasses from where they're still perched on his head, albeit at an odd angle, and slides them across the bench for safekeeping. Blaine forgets to speak or move so Kurt tugs his own Henley and the undershirt beneath it up and off and throws it in the same direction.

"God, you're beautiful," trips from Blaine's lips, and Kurt blushes and laughs and then sinks slowly to his knees, kissing Blaine's chin, his sternum and just to the side of a nipple, as he goes. There's hair he's never seen before, not like this, scattered across Blaine's chest, tickling his nose, and the scent is deeper and darker than he remembers.

He licks a circle around Blaine's belly button and bites at the skin, pulling at it before letting it slide from his teeth and kissing there. His hands make quick work of Blaine's pants now, pulling them from hip to ankle before Blaine even realizes what's going on.

Mouth still on Blaine's belly, intoxicated with the taste and the smell and the way little shivers keep rippling through the muscle beneath, Kurt reaches blindly for Blaine's crotch, hand smoothing over Blaine's hard cock and tight balls under too-thin cotton, and making Blaine buck.

He kisses once more at the trail of dark hair under Blaine's belly button and then breathes out harshly. He's hard in his briefs, the tight material almost uncomfortable, and in a second he'll reach down and re-arrange himself, but first, he wants to see Blaine, naked and hard and his.

Another nuzzle of Blaine's belly and Blaine's hands are playing in his hair. Kurt pulls back and very promptly giggles, burying his face back against the warm skin of Blaine's hip. "Sexy, Blaine," he teases, voice muffled. "Very sexy."

"Wha—" Blaine looks down and remembers just what he slipped into after his shower: tight little boxer briefs with pink and lavender horizontal lines. They're actually not the worst pair he owns, not even nearly. "Oh." He pouts and when Kurt looks up he laughs again. "Clearly, neither one of us expected to be seen in our underwear." Kurt reaches up to press his hand to Blaine's cheek, except Blaine turns his head and sucks a finger into his mouth before Kurt can stop him and holds him there with his hand tight around Kurt's wrist. He sucks until Kurt moans and slumps against him a little, face back against his stomach and Blaine is quickly coming to the conclusion that's exactly where it should always be.

He licks over the skin between thumb and forefinger and says, "You try dressing like an ADA every day of the week and then tell me you wouldn't do exactly the same." Kurt reclaims his hand and stifles another laugh, pressing his lips to the jut of a hipbone. Blaine's voice has dipped low and husky when he speaks again. "Take them off."

And Kurt's mouth goes dry, his eyes wide, and he's suddenly remembering why they're here. His thumbs slide under the purple waistband and he stares up rather than watch as he drags the material down Blaine's legs. The transition from smooth skin to the scratch of the hair on Blaine's legs is enough to have Kurt's heart stuttering, his breath coming fast all of a sudden.

He kisses Blaine's belly again and Blaine groans above him either in impatience or sensory overload, it's hard to tell, and then Blaine says his name and Kurt thinks it's both. "Kurt, please."

Shushing him, Kurt tries not to look right away because he's not sure he'll be able to stop himself from leaning in and sucking him off once he does. Already, he knows he's not going to be standing up until the job is done, and he remembers exactly how euphoric it feels to make Blaine come across his tongue. He looks down the length of Blaine's legs, paler than he remembers, and he wonders about Blaine in those suits. The hair seems coarser and the muscles even thicker than in high school. He eases one of Blaine's feet up—he'd forgotten Blaine was barefoot this entire time—and slips his pants and underwear off.

Then the other and when he looks up, Blaine is completely, gorgeously naked, leaning back against the counter. "Fuck," Kurt breathes out.

Blaine laughs, voice pulled taut over the words as he says, "That's the plan."

Kurt is meant to laugh but instead he just agrees whole-heartedly, silently, and then drops his gaze to Blaine's cock. He should feel stupid for breathing out Blaine's name again and again as his fingers curl, slow and easy, around Blaine's length, but he doesn't have the brainpower to stop himself and Blaine's whole body is shaking with holding back, his knuckles white against the kitchen counter.

"You're more stunning than I remember," Kurt mumbles, the words hitting Blaine's skin, warm and wet and making him whine high in his throat.

"Kurt, _please_…" He sounds undone already.

Involuntarily, Kurt's hand slides the length of his cock, Blaine's hips immediately rocking up to meet the touch and mismatching the movement. Kurt could just go for it, he should, but _god, _he wants to hear Blaine say it.

He would never have though himself to be so brazen with something so delicate, but he is. He's learnt that in the last decade. "What do you want Blaine?" He kisses at a hipbone again and his hand moves with the same rough friction. "Tell me what you want." Kurt bites the skin, marks it with a red splotch that he hopes will fade to a more permanent purple, and Blaine moans.

"Suck me," tumbles from Blaine's mouth and Kurt has to reach down between his own legs and press the heel of his hand into his own cock, fingers moving gingerly to pull the waistband down to press at his balls and free himself. That's all though.

"God, I need your mouth."

Kurt licks across his teeth and doesn't swallow because that would be a waste. He tries to remember how he was at this ten years ago, his foggy mind tripping over the dozen memories of tentative and sloppy and learning how to do it together.

Then he drops his gaze from Blaine's eyes to his cock, fists it again, and lets his mouth fall open around the head.

Above him, Blaine makes a choked off sound and raises up on his toes. It makes Kurt want to giggle, but he can't, because there's precome and skin, intimate and salty and _Blaine, _on his tongue and he can't get enough. He swirls his tongue around twice, licking at the slit and chasing the bitterness there and humming his pleasure, feeling it slip right through him from his mouth to his balls, where it settles hot and latent, waiting for touch to draw it up.

But this is about Blaine, making Blaine come undone, and remembering exactly what it's like to be with someone you want this badly. Blaine who has a hand in Kurt's hair, twisting it roughly as Kurt keeps sucking at just the tip and caressing over Blaine's hips and ass.

Blaine feels Kurt take the deep breath through his nose, but he's still not ready at all when Kurt's hands grasp at his hips to hold him still so Kurt can sink his mouth all the way down, swallowing tight around him and making Blaine's skin feel like it's on fire.

Hot and deep and inside Kurt—who gives a fuck if it's his mouth—Blaine is as deep as he can get, bottomed out and the light stubble of Kurt's chin is itching against Blaine's balls and that's hot for so many obscene reasons. Kurt slides back and it's welcome relief even though all Blaine wants to do is grab Kurt's head and pull him back down.

Kurt has to say it twice to get Blaine to hear him. His head is lolled all the way back, so he's staring at the ceiling until Kurt's voice registers. "Look at me."

Blaine does and as Kurt slides his mouth down, stretched wide and red and spit-slick, Blaine's gaze flickers from that to Kurt's eyes, blue and wide, the corners creased with some sort of pleasure. Kurt moves his mouth like that a few more times, sucking the taste of Blaine from every inch of his cock, holding him as deep as he can for as long as he can and revelling in the mumbled praise he doesn't think Blaine even realizes he's giving.

"Oh god," and "Kurt," and "Perfect," and "Fuck."

Kurt starts to feel dizzy and his lips feel too tight. He slides back, settling on his haunches and kissing lazily at the head, licking off the slickness as it beads there. He watches the way Blaine's head flops from side to side and back and then drops down, curls over his forehead, cheeks stained red, and sweat making his body glisten.

"Where did you—" voice raw, Blaine stops to swallow, distracted for a minute by his hand back in Kurt's hair, angling him and directing his lips in an open-mouthed slide down the side of his cock. "If you'd been able to do that to me ten years ago I would have had some serious performance problems."

Kurt chuckles and arches his back a little as he slides his mouth half way down in a tease and then back and off. He loves the scratch to his own voice when he speaks, completely ignoring what Blaine said. "You should shut up and come."

Blaine laughs and his hips angle forward again, dick sliding across Kurt's smiling lips. "Over so soon," he laments, even as his eyes skip over Kurt's face and his hand grasps at the counter tighter.

"Wanna taste you," is all Kurt says and then sinks down again, his hands shifting from Blaine's hips, letting him move into his mouth. Nails down Blaine's thighs and then fingertips teasing across Blaine's balls, behind, feeling him out and making him moan. Kurt keeps working his mouth over him.

He swallows hard and sucks and lets his eyes water to the point where there are tears on his cheeks and he loves that, he always loves that stretch to the point of looking so wrecked and undone, and when Blaine looks down at him, traces a cheekbone with his thumb, it's obvious Blaine's never seen him like that before.

Blaine calls his name and pulls his hair and Kurt slides off again, and now he's the one to beg, voice rasping. "Wanna remember what you taste like."

It makes both Blaine's hands bury themselves in Kurt's hair and pull his mouth back down onto Blaine's cock. Just for a second. And then Blaine's hands are gone and he's spluttering as Kurt coughs and wipes a hand over his lips. "Sorry, shit, you can't say things like that and—"

Kurt coughs again, licks his lips, and grins. "You can fuck my mouth," he mumbles, the faintest blush rising in his cheeks because he would never ever have dreamed he would say such things to Blaine, even if he has said it to so many other men. "I like it," he reassures.

"I really…" Blaine pets a hand down the side of Kurt's face, fingers tracing his lips, and he watches with wide eyes as Kurt turns his face into the touch, licking over the pad of Blaine's thumb. "You're amazing," Blaine breathes.

Both hands shift to Kurt's face, slow and careful, and Kurt wants to feel the scratch in his throat for days. More than that, he wants to watch Blaine come apart. He kisses at the head, swirling his tongue around and sucking lightly at the underside. He feels silly asking, but he's waited too long to miss out and his whole body thrums with wanting affirmation that this is real. "Just make sure I taste it when you come."

Blaine nods as though he understands and stares down at Kurt, debauched and wrecked and perfect. His hands tighten in Kurt's hair and he stalls, sliding just the tip across Kurt's tongue and watching.

Kurt just stares up, still and breathing evenly through his nose, eyes a challenge and hair messed and sweaty beneath Blaine's touch.

"Oh Kurt," Blaine whimpers and then slides slowly, easily, all the way forward, watching the way Kurt's breath stutters and stops, his lips tightening around the girth of Blaine's cock and his cheeks hollowing as he sucks. It feels too good, way, way too good, and Blaine wishes he had the willpower to do everything, but he doesn't and he's going to come from this, across Kurt's tongue, and then spend as long as he possibly can paying Kurt back.

He watches Kurt's eyes glaze over and his throat work through a swallow that he feels to his very core. Then he pulls back, eyes fluttering shut at the hot drag of Kurt's throat and mouth over his cock.

He fucks back forward then, into Kurt's open throat, deep and then deeper still, pulling Kurt forward onto him, feeling where Kurt's nose is pressed into the hair at the base of his cock. This time when he pulls back, Kurt moans.

Again and again and it feels too tight and hot and wet to last. Better than anything, Blaine thinks, and his head swims with it. His skin is too tight and his spine is too loose and Kurt is just taking it so, _so_ beautifully_. _

His balls are tight and aching every time they slap against Kurt's chin, his muscles threatening to cramp. Blaine would warn Kurt, would say something other than his name and a string of profanities, except it's his hands pulling Kurt's mouth down, his hips fucking forward into his mouth.

Kurt has no say in the matter and is wanton with it, eyes shut and face stained red and moaning when he can find the breath to.

_Fuck_.

Blaine pulls him down around his cock one more time and holds himself tight, waiting just a little longer, buried and perfect and wishing he could get himself around Kurt right now, drag him in and close and come together but it is far too late for that. Then he pulls back, lets himself feel every delicious inch of _hot-wet-tight_ friction on his way out and forces himself not to fuck straight back in.

He hooks his thumb into the corner of Kurt's mouth without thinking, between his teeth, holding his lips wide open and curving himself over Kurt so the head of his cock rests against Kurt's tongue, the throb in his balls, in his belly, making his whole body ache.

"Kurt," he calls and waits for Kurt to open his eyes and blink away the moisture and look up at him through tear-wet eyelashes.

Then he's coming, a hand going around the base of his own cock to work himself through it, coming white across Kurt's tongue and down his throat, his hips stuttering as Kurt automatically closes his lips around Blaine's cock and thumb to suck. Blaine's cock slips free as he gasps and pants, hips jerking. He comes in a streak across Kurt's lips and his own hand where it's now pressed around Kurt's chin.

Then back inside Kurt's mouth, Kurt's lips closed and tight and hot and sucking, working him through it but not letting him deep, flicking his tongue around the head and licking at the slit, over and over and swallowing hard on the taste. Just when Blaine feels his legs start to give out, the aftershocks too much and his whole world swimming before his eyes, Kurt grabs his ass and pulls him forward, deep down his throat and he swallows again.

"Fuck," Blaine says it too loudly as he stumbles back the few inches into the kitchen counter, weight sagging there as his cock slides from Kurt's lips with an obscene wet sound and he sees, out of the corner of his eye, Kurt lick his lips and smirk.

His head falls back and he moans again, simply because he can. Eyes sliding shut, his whole body feels boneless and wonderful and he wants to curl up against something warm and sleep but oh god, he wants more. He wants everything he can get and down at his knees, Kurt, he knows, is smirking and watching him—all of him—and caressing his fingers in swirls up and down the skin of Blaine's thighs.

He stays that way until he can feel his toes again and then he blinks his eyes open and looks down. Kurt is looking back at him, dishevelled and fucked raw, grinning hard with bright red lips and come still on his chin. He looks perfect.

Blaine pulls him up and against him, fumbling and almost falling to get them close again, and his cock twitches painfully at the friction of Kurt's thigh and he can feel Kurt deliciously hard against his hip. Then he kisses him and the rest of his body just melts away. Hard, owning kisses that he never wants to end, even as his whole body is reeling from it and fighting for breath and air. Pushing his tongue into Kurt's mouth even as Kurt gasps and laughs and kisses him back, trying to keep up. Blaine tastes himself and Kurt and sweat and can't stop himself from holding Kurt's face in his hands as he kisses across his cheek bones and then back to his lips, sucking on one and then the other and delighting in the way Kurt rocks into him.

Kurt mumbles out, "Blaine," like a plea, and Blaine takes long enough to look at him, to slide his thumb through the cooling drip of come on his chin and slide it into his mouth. Kurt moans around it and then kisses him once more.

"That was amazing," Blaine says into his mouth. "You're amazing." Kurt's mouth slides down the column of his throat and begins to work a mark there, content to wait for Blaine to get his breath back. "God, I wanted to do more than that."

Kurt's teeth nip hard enough to sting as he laughs into Blaine's skin.

"Seriously, I never wanted that to end and I wanted…" Blaine can't think like this, so he pulls Kurt off and stutters as Kurt stares at his neck. "I wanted more than that. I wanted everything."

Kurt laughs at him and ducks his eyes and kisses his sternum. They're both thinking that if they do this right, tonight could go for hours and Blaine will fight the pull of sleep and cuddling for as long as he can. Kurt imagines all the skin he can kiss and then realizes that Blaine is right there under his mouth and gets distracted and kisses lower, over the curve of his chest, the hair tickling his lips. "I thought I did pretty well," he teases.

"Oh my god, Kurt you were amazing. You… I… I have never, _ever, _come like that." He's earnest, but then Blaine gets that he is teasing and wonders with a sucked down breath if it's the alcohol or the decade of waiting or Kurt himself that's making him babble. "Fuck off," he mumbles when Kurt smirks at him, eyes twinkling.

"I don't remember you swearing this much, Blaine." He tries to sound scandalized, just a little, but falls short because he really kind of loves it and his voice is still low and throaty.

Blaine attempts to glare and tries to get his fingers working well enough to start tracing patterns up Kurt's side and across his belly. "Yeah?" Blaine swallows, chasing and finally finding focus again. _Now it's Kurt's turn. _He slides his hand flat across Kurt's belly and down, around Kurt's cock with slow deliberation, watching Kurt's face as he does it. "I don't remember you ever asking me to fuck your mouth."

"I like it," Kurt whispers, face already tinging red again, eyes closed and his hips rocking into the barely there touch of Blaine's hand.

"I know," Blaine says, giving Kurt's cock a squeeze. "Jesus, Kurt."

"I'm not quite as shy as I used to be," Kurt states, watching between them where Blaine's started a slow stroke up and down his dick.

"Neither am I," Blaine says without thinking.

"Oh?" Kurt tempts, making Blaine look up and fix him with a steady gaze.

"Yeah," Blaine mumbles, and with aching clarity, he suddenly knows _exactly _what he wants. He kisses Kurt hard, once, letting him fall heavy against his chest and moan into his mouth. "You wanna come?" Blaine asks.

* * *

**A/N: **Sorry for the slight delay in this one. Tumblr went down last night and I was very tired and a bit drunk so I gave up and had a nap. Hopefully the length of this chapter will make up for it? Change of pace, I know, but it is me, this was bound to happen sooner or later. Also: not a cliffhanger. Blaine's question was clearly rhetorical in nature. Thanks for all the review once again! I'm loving them!


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine**

Kurt just smirks at him with a raised eyebrow and color in his cheeks.

One hand splayed across Kurt's waist, Blaine pushes him back. Then he crouches at Kurt's feet and slides his hand off Kurt's cock, placing one quick kiss and a scratch of his teeth to Kurt's hip on the way. He unlaces Kurt's shoes and helps him toe them off, relishing the weight of Kurt leaning on his shoulders for balance. Shoes off, he slips Kurt's briefs down his legs and helps him step out of the material pooled at his feet. He tugs one sock off at a time.

He's back on his feet, kissing Kurt and feeling him sway, oh so naked, against him. It's all too easy, with Kurt's arms looped behind his neck and his own hands on Kurt's hips, to walk him back. As they move further, they stop kissing on the mouth and begin kissing at each other's skin whenever it's close enough. In this manner, Blaine's eyes can flicker around the room, watching where they're going.

"Bed?" Kurt asks, his eyes still closed and sounding hopeful.

"Nope," Blaine says, and then his hands tighten on Kurt's hips, fingers digging in as he lifts him, making him gasp and squeal and then dissolve into giggles as Blaine pushes his naked ass back across then smooth wood of the table they just ate at.

"Blaine, what—"

Blaine cuts him off with another kiss, hungry and desperate again at just the idea of what he might be allowed to do. His hands find Kurt's thighs and spread them, stepping between and pressing his half-hard cock up against Kurt's entirely hard one and feeling Kurt arch and mewl into his mouth.

He kisses him until they're both breathless and Kurt's hips are rocking against his recklessly, and then Blaine pushes him back and watches his eyes flutter open. "Lay back," he says, his hand smoothing down Kurt's chest to his stomach, pushing lightly.

Kurt hesitates just a moment. He wonders what Blaine will do and how he'll do it and whether he himself should just take control and demand. But he waits, back against the cold wood, exposed, his sweat-slick skin cooling.

He has to bite his lip to stop from saying anything when Blaine's hands on his thighs grip tighter, pull him wider. Because Blaine is looking at him with dark eyes and a small smile, gaze moving up and over him as his thumbs inch higher into the creases where Kurt's legs meet his torso.

"Up," Blaine tells him, leaving little room for argument when he slides his hands under Kurt's legs and pushes them up and then further, pulling Kurt back down the table so his ass is balanced on the edge, then pushing his legs back and over him, folding him in half and not hesitating for a moment to let Kurt think about it.

Not until Kurt's legs are wide and high and Blaine is holding them there while he stares down at where Kurt's cock is red and dribbling precome across his abdomen, his ass is completely on display.

It's terrifyingly intimate, but Kurt just keeps biting his lip and refusing to look away from everything he can see painted across Blaine's face.

Hooking one of Kurt's ankles over his shoulder, Blaine stares up at him and somehow Kurt thinks his eyes shade even darker, his grin growing even more wolfish, and he doesn't remember him ever being quite like this.

Kurt swallows.

Running a teasing finger from Kurt's balls down, Blaine touches over his hole in a barely-there caress, and then down to the table. He traces back up, circles, and then draws swirls across the skin on one side of Kurt's ass. His voice is low, the question almost rhetorical, because Blaine can see every shiver, every clench of muscle. "Are you still as sensitive as you used to be?"

They never once talked about it, how Kurt got off so much faster and harder and more desperately when Blaine brushed his fingers back and fingered him, or about how Blaine had to be quick when stretching him open and fuck him rough if they both wanted to come. But Blaine knew, and Kurt knew Blaine knew, and now Blaine was saying it with a devilish grin and the biggest tease in his eyes. Kurt wants to tease back, say something sassy and challenging, but he can feel the dull, dry pressure of a finger against him, and his cock aches from being hard so long and when he opens his mouth he can only whimper and keep watching.

Blaine leans forward, wedging himself between Kurt's legs and bending down to lick a strip up the underside of Kurt's cock, wet, rough friction that makes Kurt's head spin and his eyes slam shut. He doesn't even care that he isn't going to last at all because it's Blaine, and Blaine is damned lucky Kurt didn't get himself off when Blaine came on his tongue.

He doesn't get his eyes open before Blaine's tongue soothes back down. Then his mouth closes over one of Kurt's balls and sucks, then the other and Kurt's head is pressed back into the wood and turned to the side.

Blaine's mouth reaches the inside of Kurt's thigh, sucking, biting, kissing, and Kurt takes a breath.

"How do you feel about rimming?" It's mumbled into the soft skin at the crease of his leg, but what Kurt hears is unmistakable and he whimpers to think it, eyes squeezing shut again as his hand trips down his body to squeeze at the base of his cock.

He waits and waits and when Blaine just keeps breathing hot against his leg, Kurt forces himself to look.

When Blaine catches his eye, the wolfish quality is gone and he looks young and shy, which is ridiculous because he's got his mouth so close to being _there_ and they are naked and Kurt is on his back.

"I'm asking because we never—"

Kurt knows. Kurt was never brave enough to ask and Blaine was never forward enough to assume. They never, ever once did that, and Kurt's had dreams about it for years and years.

"Yes," he breathes out, watching Blaine's eyes go wide and his lips quirk up. "Oh my god, _yes." _

And Blaine falls into him so damn fast that Kurt can barely keep up. Blaine's mouth on him, behind his balls, hot and wet and kissing. There's no build up of kitten licks and teases, not when Kurt is so close and showing it with little whimpers and the constant arch of his back. Blaine just goes for it like it is the only thing he wants in the world.

Tongue strong and pressing, just like it has always been when he kisses Kurt full on the mouth and it's leading to somewhere. Except now, it's against his ass, where he's spread open and rocking into it, and he should feel ashamed at how quickly he's got one hand pulling a leg wider and the other buried in Blaine's hair, at how hopelessly desperately he's calling Blaine's name and begging him, "_Please don't stop_."

But it feels too perfect to care.

Blaine kisses and licks and slowly works him open, his hands busy helping hold his thighs apart and absentmindedly stroking Kurt's cock. He licks and sucks until the muscle starts to give way and there's spit dripping down Kurt's crack to the table and Blaine's nose is slick with it as well.

When Kurt whines, high pitched and desperate, back bowed as he bears down against Blaine's mouth, Blaine laughs and squeezes his thigh, then kisses higher, away to lick across Kurt's balls, teasing now, just for a moment, just to drag it out an extra few seconds. He looks up at Kurt, past his dick, and he can't see his face but he can see the sweat across his red-mottled chest and his tight nipples and the way he's twisting with it.

Sucking another faint mark into the pale skin of Kurt's ass, Blaine can't help but say, "God I love your ass," and Kurt chokes on a laugh.

"_Please_," Kurt begs, rocking his hips.

Blaine slides a finger in easily, blunt pressure and Kurt shuddering as the muscle gives way. "So tight," Blaine breathes but Kurt doesn't hear it, moaning and riding the two inches of finger he's been given and this is exactly how Blaine remembers him.

But his tongue is better and he knows that, he's had so much practice and say what you like, Blaine is sure it was all leading to this. He slips his finger out and doesn't bother with a second, just slides his tongue back around, tracing a wet circle and then sucking over Kurt's hole before fucking into him, licking at him from the inside out as Kurt's hips stutter against him, torn between trying to ride his mouth and trying to stay still.

Blaine finds a rhythm quickly, easily, losing himself in the reality of what he is doing. Here, now, with _Kurt_. Kurt, who is coming undone in a catastrophic way against his mouth, and Blaine can't help but think that if he does this well enough (and by god is he going to) Kurt will let him do it again. Blaine presses his mouth closer, trying to tongue-fuck deeper while his lips keeps kissing him harshly and Kurt pulls Blaine closer still with a hand in his hair.

"Jesus, Blaine," Kurt pants. Blaine would smirk, except this mouth is far too busy. "Blaine, I can't—"

Blaine's hand is up and around Kurt's cock in an instant, fingers wrapping blindly and attempting to find some rhythm of stroke that matches the hard, deep kisses of his mouth. He fails monumentally, but it doesn't matter because it is _seconds_ before Kurt's wrapping his hand even tighter in Blaine's hair, a foot pressing into the center of Blaine's back, and his whole body holds Blaine tight against him as his hips fuck up once, hard, into the tightness of Blaine's hand and then down against Blaine's tongue, riding Blaine's mouth with the roll of his hips.

Kurt calls his name, breathless and panting, and he doesn't make another sound as Blaine keeps working his tongue and kissing, sucking, feeling Kurt's body pulse and come, his back bowing and his perfect pale skin sweaty and then painted with streak after streak of white. He licks Kurt's ass through it, softening his kisses to small and chaste and then kitten licks as Kurt's body drops back to the wood and his leg slips from Blaine's shoulder.

Blaine nuzzles there, sucking in a breath of Kurt and sweat and sex, just behind his balls, just for a moment. Then he stands, body slipping up through where Kurt's thighs are still spread, but limp, resting pale except for the red marks where fingertips pressed moments before. Blaine runs the back of his hand over his mouth and takes the opportunity to hide a grin.

He's halfway bent over Kurt, intent on kissing him hard and deep and making sure neither one of them ever, ever forgets this when he remembers that despite having Kurt laid out and exposed and coming around his tongue, they've never come close to doing any of this together. Not for so very, very long. And he hesitates, staring at Kurt with bright brown eyes and a creased brow.

So, Kurt is the one to haul him in by the back of the neck and meet him half way, kissing him hard enough to make both their mouths ache and their heads spin. He drops back to the table too soon, his stomach muscles threatening to give out and the come from his belly and chest smeared across Blaine's. Still panting, he just lies there, staring and slowly starting to smile.

"You okay?" Blaine asks, voice still a little rough, his bare toes curling against the floorboards.

Kurt arches an eyebrow, licks his lips, and has the audacity to stretch out, naked and sated. "Yeah," he mumbles, voice so much worse than Blaine's and they both know why. "Yeah, just give me a minute."

Blaine nods and rocks on his feet, about to move away but Kurt's hand grabs hard at his and pulls him back between his legs. "Thank you," he whispers as one of Blaine's hands comes up to rest flat on the side of his chest, ignoring the cooling smears of come.

He tweaks over a nipple just to watch Kurt arch.

"I'm gonna get a washcloth and then we're gonna have more cheesecake, okay?" Blaine tells him, squeezing his hand and then finally drawing away.

* * *

When he comes back, Kurt is sitting on the edge of the table, blinking slowly and with his jeans pulled on up to his knees. His cock is soft and resting against his thigh, and his body is still slick. He's smiling, though, and watching Blaine carefully through sleepy eyes.

Blaine throws the cloth across the room, having already taken care of his own mess, and busies himself pulling the cheesecake back out of the fridge. By the time he's cut a third generous slice and covered the plate in sauce, Kurt's slipping off the table and pulling his jeans up over his hips. Blaine slides his own underwear up his legs and beckons Kurt over.

It's too easy to slip into stealing glances at each other, suddenly feeling shy and a little unsure. They don't speak, but Blaine presses the spoon to Kurt's lips and watches him suck the dessert off and lick his lips.

At some point Kurt finds the wine glasses and refills them.

Not long after, Blaine gives in to the pull of Kurt's eyes and leans across the kitchen counter to kiss him through a mouthful of raspberry sauce and white wine.

"Don't stop," Blaine whispers when he pulls back.

Kurt mutters, "Never," without really thinking.

Blaine's giggling into the kiss, then snorting as he tries to focus, then pushing Kurt back and waiting for him to laugh too, laughing harder when Kurt does.

"Do you think we've had too much wine?" Kurt asks.

"I think we've had too much sex," Blaine mumbles and kisses Kurt again, sliding a raspberry flavoured finger across his lips as he pulls back.

"Not yet," Kurt tells him and smiles.

"Not ever," Blaine replies, and it would be another prompt for giggling like love-drunk idiots, except Blaine leans in and captures Kurt's mouth first. "God, you're amazing," he mumbles when he pulls back to press kisses down Kurt's neck while Kurt steals another spoonful of cheesecake. "Seriously, Kurt, when did you get this amazing?"

Kurt laughs lightly and teases, "You mean I wasn't before?"

Teeth nipping at the corner of his jaw, Blaine takes a mouthful of wine and then sets his mouth back against Kurt's skin. "I always thought you were amazing." It takes another half dozen kisses and another mouthful of wine to make him brave enough to utter, "I hate that it's taken me ten years to find you again."

"I hate London," Kurt says absently.

But Blaine shushes him and sucks across a collarbone. "London's amazing. Hate our lack of reliable teleportation methods."

And that sets Kurt off giggling again.

They talk in circles until the wine is gone and the cheesecake is just an excuse to lick raspberry sauce off each other's lips. They kiss and kiss until they're dizzy with it and the night outside is as quiet as ever in New York.

Finally, Kurt pulls back and fixes Blaine with a bright blue stare and tilts his head. "I want to make you come again," he says simply. And then, "Can you fuck me?"

* * *

**A/N: **Phew. How much sex can these two have? And how many freaking words will it take me to describe it? Hope you're still enjoying it. It always makes me wonder whether the drop in reviews for porny chapters is because they're not as good or whether it's because there's a lot less meaningful to be said about them. Either way, thanks as always to everyone who reviews anything at all! I remain really excited to hear how you're finding the fic and really excited about the chapters to come!


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N: **Okay, a little early because I am racing to get to all of what comes next. But yes, here it is.

**Chapter Ten**

"Can I—" Blaine stutters it out and then stops because his voice has died in his throat and he's looking at Kurt incredulously, allowing himself a long moment to drink in the vision of him in skin-hugging jeans and nothing else. With messed up hair and pink cheeks and red lips and stubble. Broad shoulders and pale skin and the prettiest pink nipples Blaine thinks he has ever seen.

He doesn't quite know how to put into words how badly he wants to fuck him, or why he's so desperate, or how hard he's fighting the instinct to crawl across the counter.

Somehow, he manages to get his legs to work, stepping around to where Kurt's leaning and watching him with a smile once more, eyes dancing when he lets his gaze slip down Blaine's body to his ridiculous boxer briefs.

Then Blaine has him pressed up against the kitchen counter and is holding him tightly by the hips and kissing him, and it's no longer lazy. It's desperate and owning and rough and Kurt loves it.

Kurt moans into it, thinking he's about to be thrown on the bed and fucked like he needs to be. He still wants to be able to feel it six months from now when he's stuck in London and god knows how lonely. So he kisses Blaine back and loops his arms around Blaine's neck. He gasps into the kiss when Blaine's hands start to lift him and he thinks, for a moment, that he's going to be pushed back onto another kitchen surface, but instead Blaine just lifts and pulls him forward. Through the heat in his mind, Kurt realizes, with a start, that Blaine can carry him and moans as his legs wrap too easily around Blaine's hips.

Blaine stumbles to the bedroom and Kurt doesn't open his eyes for a second. Instead, he revels in the feel of hard, strong, perfect under him and the smell of Blaine's neck where he's already sweated so much tonight, and then at the taste as he licks and sucks some more.

Kurt doesn't open his eyes until he's falling through the air and thinking, for just the smallest of moments, that Blaine has dropped him. But then his eyes are snapping open and Blaine's crawling over him and there's soft, warped cotton beneath him.

Blaine's bedroom. Blues and reds and a bookcase full to overflowing. Cupboards and a dresser and paintings on the wall that Kurt knows immediately are Monet prints. He catches a glimpse of a white ceiling and then Blaine is trying to clamour back over him and kiss him again, but Kurt wriggles free and up onto his knees, surveying the bed he's been thrown on.

Dark red sheets and an off-white duvet crumpled at the end, black pillows thrown around and he remarks, "You didn't make the bed."

Beside him, Blaine is kicking his underwear off, flinging them towards the still open door and then rolling, naked, onto his stomach. "I never make the bed," he says, and Kurt laughs as he tries hard not to stare at the perfect swell of Blaine's ass.

Except then he has his hands there, cupping the muscles and kneading and feeling his mouth flood and his dick twitch. Blaine catches him by the wrist and pulls him down, kissing him as he stretches a hand under the pillows and pulls out last night's boxers, flinging them at the door. Kurt sees him do it and raises a judging eyebrow.

"In what universe—" Blaine manages to get over him, straddling his hips and kissing across a nipple. "Was I meant— He pauses to flick his tongue out over the other. "To think I'd have you in my bed tonight?" he finishes, kissing Kurt's chin and then his mouth, not really wanting an answer.

"Would you have made the bed?" Kurt asks, hands between them, teasing at Blaine's cock on the way to undoing his own jeans and trying to wriggle out of them.

"Kurt." Blaine moves above him, resting on his elbows, saying his name like _that. _"I would have bought expensive sheets and candles and… and more mature underwear."

"I kind of love you underwear," Kurt laughs, and Blaine brushes the hair back off his forehead. "This is nice," Kurt tells him. "This is kind of perfect."

He doesn't expect Blaine's face to fall or the crease between his eyes to appear as his gaze ducks away.

Kurt feels something inside him threaten to break and he forgot how terrible needing someone felt. He has no idea how it has happened so quickly, or maybe he does. "You don't want—"

"London," Blaine murmurs. "That's all. It… it feels like it could be perfect but… London."

Kurt somehow gets a hand between them, tracing his fingertips up Blaine's side and over his chest, feeling his heart. He kind of wishes they were still giggling and teasing. "Just kiss me, okay?" Kurt eventually responds, because what else is he meant to say? He is leaving in five days and saying anything at all about it puts far, far too much weight onto one night's encounter. Doesn't it?

Blaine kisses him, over his mouth and across his face, tangling his hands in Kurt's hair and letting his body drop to fit against his.

"Just kiss me and fuck me and keep laughing with me," Kurt says.

Blaine laughs, right into the crook of Kurt's neck, and then he says, "I don't think I've ever laughed this much during sex."

"Good." And Blaine starts to slip down his body, mouth over his chest and his nipples, past his belly button and his hips, and sucking his cock into his mouth again, making Kurt buck up and gasp.

Blaine licks around the head and listens to Kurt say "good" over and over. He slides off the foot of the bed and onto the carpet, hands trailing over Kurt's calves as he pulls his jeans the rest of the way off and throws them towards the door. Blaine steps around the bed to his bedside table and pulls open the bottom drawer, blushing hard when he feels Kurt turn onto his side to watch him.

There's the lube and the condoms, which he grabs, but there's no way that Kurt can miss the flesh coloured dildo or the slim purple vibrator, or the anal beads nestled in beside them.

"I really wasn't expecting company," Blaine says again, still blushing as he climbs back on the bed beside Kurt.

"Sexy," Kurt mutters, and then pulls him down against him, fitting their mouths together.

They're both hard too easily, and it would be so simple for Blaine to stretch Kurt open and fuck him hard and fast, finding blissful release within minutes. But then it would be over, and they both suspect the truth of that and so they kiss and rock and touch lightly at each other, until the makes Kurt whimper and Blaine's hands start to shake. When Blaine's fingers trip back behind Kurt's balls, Kurt lets his legs fall wide and his head tilt back as he says, "Go on."

Blaine shuffles back, down between his legs, kneeling and looking, wishing he could somehow trick Kurt into letting him try to lick him open, but Kurt is already pawing between his legs, holding his cock and balls out of the way and pushing two fingers against his hole and Blaine _needs_ to be the one doing that.

He bats Kurt's hands away and finds the lube, letting it warm on his fingers while they both watch each other and try to settle their breathing. "Don't waste time, okay?" Kurt says. "I want you in me."

Blaine nods dumbly, surprised by the sudden change of pace from languid to not so, but not willing to argue. He slides a wet finger over Kurt's hole and watches Kurt's muscles tighten.

His finger slips in with barely any resistance, Kurt's ass still stretched from Blaine's tongue.

But god is he tight inside. Much tighter than Blaine remembers him being ten years ago, and definitely hotter and it makes his dick throb harder. He feels like a horny, desperate teenager again, except with so much more understanding of it all, of what it can be. He shakes his head and focuses on Kurt's whimpers, the catches in his breath.

"Another."

Blaine complies and this bit is easy, formulaic. Small, easy touches, nothing too much because Kurt is turned on and the point isn't for him to get off on Blaine's hand. So, Blaine just stretches him open, moving his fingers in and out and easing the muscles loose. He adds more lube and Kurt's back bows. "One more?" Blaine asks, and Kurt's whole body twists as he shakes his head.

"That's enough," Kurt mumbles.

Blaine can't quite resist crooking his fingers up a little as he slides them out, teasing at Kurt with muscle memory from a lifetime ago.

It makes Kurt's ass lift off the bed and try to ride down on Blaine's fingers. It makes Kurt moan, high and loud in his throat, and when Blaine pulls his fingers all the way out and Kurt collapses, he glares and says, "Fuck you."

It's one of the sexiest things anyone has ever said to him. Blaine smirks, and then he is wiping the lube from his fingers on his own thigh and flattening his hands down Kurt's hips. He presses a kiss to his chest and reaches for a condom. He doesn't ask Kurt how he wants to do this. All Blaine wants is to do it just like this, face to face, as close as they can get and for as long as they can last.

But Kurt's hand catches his and stops him. "Wait," Kurt says. "I want this to be together."

For a moment, Blaine thinks he means bare and he will if Kurt asks. He's clean and he trusts Kurt. That might be incredibly stupid, but he so will. But that isn't what Kurt means.

Pulling him down, Kurt kisses him and murmurs, "You're gonna fuck me." Kurt stops to suck on Blaine's tongue, teeth scratching and pulling a moan into his mouth. "And then I'm gonna fuck you."

It's too much. It has to be, but Blaine's hips jerk up into the warmth of Kurt's belly and with the idea planted in his head he doesn't know which he wants more. Kurt pushes him up onto his hands and knees and then off him, wriggling out from under Blaine's body and searching the sheets for the lube. "I'll be quick," he says, kissing Blaine's shoulder and steadying him on his hands and knees. His voice is softer still, stripped bare when he admits, "I can't not have you every possible way tonight."

_Because London_.

Blaine nods, and when he feels Kurt's mouth on his back, kissing to the curve of his ass, he automatically drops down onto his elbows and buries his face in a pillow. He can't see Kurt snaking a hand back to his own ass, sliding two fingers deep and twisting roughly.

"Tell me if I'm too fast," Kurt warns, breathless. There's the click of the lube and then there's a slick finger, no thumb, pushing against Blaine's hole and then sliding inside as Blaine groans. He hasn't been like this in so long but his body remembers exactly how good it can feel.

Kurt kisses his back and then the swell of his ass as he works him open. Just as careful as Blaine was with him, just as easy and methodical. His thumb, and then two fingers, and then three, and Blaine doesn't mean to start begging but he does.

"Kurt, enough, no more—" He sucks in a breath and tries to stop his hips from fucking back onto Kurt's fingers. "Stop, you gotta fuck me, please Kurt, please, _now." _

And then he feels Kurt's tongue on him, around the fingers there and then between, licking at the skin, and he can feel Kurt breathing him in and it's far, _far, _too much. Blaine's legs spread further apart until he's collapsing flat on the mattress and rutting there, Kurt's fingers slipping out, Kurt rocking back onto his knees to watch Blaine writhe for a moment before flipping him onto his back and crawling on top of him to kiss him senseless.

"Tell me you have something in that drawer to keep you stretched open," Kurt mumbles against Blaine's lips and Blaine twists under him again, skin alive and balls throbbing, his cock leaking precome against the length of Kurt's.

He shakes his head though and mumbles, "Don't want anything, just want you." Kurt laughs at that, heat twisting inside him at the knowledge that once Blaine's come, he'll have to fuck slow and easy into Blaine's limp body and work him open on his cock properly.

"Need you to fuck me now, okay?" Kurt asks, butterfly kisses pressed across Blaine's collarbones. "Just like this," he says, spreading his legs wider over Blaine's and rocking his ass down so Blaine's cock drags heavy across his hole. They both gasp and Blaine nods.

Moving back, Kurt finds a condom again and tears it open with his teeth, spitting the foil off to the side and knowing Blaine's eyes are on him the whole time. He rolls the condom down Blaine's cock, careful and conscious of the way Blaine's body twists and tightens beneath his with even the lightest friction.

Up on his knees, a hand around the base of Blaine's cock, Kurt positions himself over Blaine. He looks up to his face, sweating and open-mouthed and mussed-haired and smiling at him. Kurt knows damn well he's never, ever seen anything so beautiful, but he bites his lip and doesn't say it, because if Blaine smiles a little wider, looks any more beautiful, Kurt thinks this will all be over too soon.

Instead, Kurt swallows hard and holds his breath, dropping down enough to feel the blunt pressure of the head of Blaine's cock against him. Blaine doesn't move, doesn't breathe, and they both hold the moment between them for several long seconds. Then Kurt sinks down further, onto Blaine's cock, and he gasps, his head falling back at the stretch of it, slides further down, taking more and more inside him, feeling too full and too hot, and then feeling Blaine's hips beneath him as he bottoms out.

He'd planned to last for ages, to draw this out and make Blaine beg, but he isn't going to last at all. Not feeling like this, not feeling this stretched open and perfectly full. His whole body is alive and Blaine's skin is against his, his smell permeating him everywhere and Blaine is kissing him again.

Pulling him down and kissing him while his hips rock up in small movements, sliding just barely in and out of Kurt and mumbling something incomprehensible into his mouth.

Wrapping his hand around the base of his cock, Kurt closes his eyes and wills himself to focus on Blaine, on the feel of him. He pulls his hips up and then drops back down, breath catching deep in his lungs and staying there as Blaine's tongue licks across his cheek by accident before Blaine swears into his ear. Kurt does it again and squeezes his cock harder, squeezes his eyes shut tighter and feels them begin to water with how much he wants this to last.

He rides Blaine's cock one more time, hips stuttering up all the way and then slamming back down so the sound of skin on skin echoes around the room along with Blaine's moan. Then he rolls to the side, scrabbling at Blaine's hip to keep him inside and against him, pulling him on top of him and finding his ear with his teeth, biting at the lobe when Blaine's cock slides deeper and then deeper still as Kurt's legs wrap around his waist and pull him down.

Kurt cries out and Blaine bucks, and then Kurt murmurs, "Fuck me as hard as you want but don't let me come."

Blaine pulls back to stare at him with wide eyes. He nods and draw his hips back, fucking into him hard and deep and making Kurt's moan slip higher. Blaine hesitates, not sure what to do, and then Kurt begs, "Keep going," and "Fuck me," and Blaine couldn't stop himself if he wanted to.

He pulls his hips back and fucks in once again, but this time he doesn't stop, repeating the movement again and again, over and over, as hard as he can because Kurt is just lying there, with his face pressed half into a pillow and his eyes squeezed shut. He's smiling and moaning and grasping at Blaine's hips, holding on and willing him forward and, _god,_ Kurt's body feels like heaven.

He's hot and tight and perfect around him and Blaine doesn't want to come ever but his body wants to come right damn now and Kurt needs that. Kurt's cock is slick between them and dark red and he is desperate, begging, needing Blaine to tip over the edge—

So that Kurt can fuck him. Kurt wants him finished so that Kurt can sink his cock inside Blaine's ass and fuck him as hard as he wants and come deep inside him, and Blaine wants that too so he fucks into Kurt harder. He fucks him with long measured strokes that trip pleasure from the base of his cock all the way to the head and trigger hot pleasure twisting at the base of his spine, tightening his balls.

"God, you feel good," he says, kissing up Kurt's throat. "So fucking good." Without really thinking, he adds, "I'd forgotten."

He hears Kurt breath catch and shudder out of him, Kurt's hips fucking up to meet his. Kurt's hand scratches up his back, from ass to shoulder and down, nails biting, hanging on. He watches as Kurt runs his own hand over his chest and up his neck and into his sweat-ruined hair, tugging there as Kurt's head thrashes to the other side. He lets out a wracked breath that sounds near a sob and fucks his hips up hard, taking Blaine's cock deep inside him and squeezing tight.

Blaine can see the purple bruise he's left on Kurt's neck and it brings him closer. He can feel the lines on his back and the fingerprints across his ass, and his cock throbs with it and he is so close, so perfectly close, and he says so, hot, open mouth on Kurt's neck, wrecked voice uttering, "Gonna come," and it just makes Kurt sob again.

Somehow Kurt gets his mouth on the tendon of Blaine's neck, teeth holding tight and biting hard, only stopping to pull back and he pleads, "Blaine, now, _please._ I'm so close and I can't—" and then Kurt bites down again, cock throbbing under his hand but he won't come, not yet, not for a few more moments. First, he wants to watch Blaine.

Blaine does as he's told, grabbing Kurt's hips and pushing him down into his bed, desperate for his sheets to smell of Kurt and them together forever. He holds him there and fucks into him, over and over, squeezing his eyes shut tight and letting the throb in his balls build until it feels like he's going to pass out, and then he fucks deep and rough, all the way inside, Kurt's legs tight around his back and holding him there as he cries out and comes hard.

Kurt teeth scratch away from Blaine's neck and he watches Blaine work himself through it. Little stutters of his hips against his ass, tiny drags inside him as Blaine's cock throbs and he spills in the condom. Kurt holds his breath and tries to commit to memory the lines of Blaine's face, twisted up in ecstasy, the tendons of his neck standing out stark under red-flushed, sweaty skin, marked up with a hundred bites, all of them Kurt's. He watches the first deep breath Blaine takes as his hips still and he begins to come down, the way Blaine's chest expands and contracts, the muscles of his arms doing the same.

Swallowing, Kurt has to tell him, "You're beautiful." Blaine is too undone to do anything but laugh, deep and still breathless.

He slides out of Kurt too quickly, making Kurt hiss. Blaine flops to the side, sprawling on his back, his fingers pressing lazily around the base of his cock to hold the condom in place. Kurt stares across at him, still strung out and desperate and still holding himself taut to stop from coming. Blaine just breathes, eyes shut, face lax with pleasure and Kurt keeps watching.

Eventually it is too much, and silently Kurt is moving on his hands and knees, closer to Blaine. It's not etiquette, at this point, to pull the condom away, but he doesn't care. He reaches out with shaking, careful fingers and slides it stickily off, knotting it and staring around the room for a trashcan. There isn't one, and he sure as hell isn't moving, so he dumps it on the bedside table and then moves his eyes back to Blaine's.

Blaine who is almost asleep, whose breathing has almost settled, and who looks exactly like Kurt was imagining all night. He can't stop himself from leaning down and kissing at Blaine's hip, making him twitch, tasting the sweat. He kisses at Blaine's softening cock, drawing out a whimper and the taste of Blaine back across his tongue.

God, Kurt needs to fuck him _now_.

Blaine's eyes are closed and he's smiling by the time Kurt has a condom on and has slicked himself up, but Kurt kisses him, and Blaine kisses him lazily back, and then he lets Kurt push him into the centre of the bed, onto his belly.

Kurt kisses down the line of Blaine's spine and fists his cock even though he still feels dangerously close to the edge. He just needs to be inside him. He needs it and he isn't going to let himself think about why. He's just going to take it.

He nudges Blaine's legs apart with his knees and settles between them, spreading Blaine's ass and finding his hole beautifully dark and tight and still slick with lube. He drops his whole body over Blaine's and rocks against him, kissing behind his ear and whispering, "Please tell me I can do this. Please don't say no."

It's quiet and languid when it slides from Blaine's mouth and it makes Kurt want to cry. "Fuck me."

Blaine's legs spread even wider, but he hasn't the energy to raise up, and Kurt is just fine with that, sitting back a little and spreading his ass open with both hands, sliding the head of his cock up the crack and back down and hearing Blaine moan low in his throat. Gripping his cock with one hand, Kurt lines himself up and presses inside.

Blaine twitches beneath him, voice breathy when he whines again, undoubtedly oversensitive and spent, but taking it beautifully anyway. Inch by delicious inch disappearing inside him and Kurt can watch it happen, ease the muscles of Blaine's back and ass with a soothing hand as he drags the motion out over seconds because he has to, because Blaine is so damn tight.

Somehow he settles all the way in, his balls pressed up close to Blaine's, his cock throbbing achingly inside him, and Blaine's hips roll back slightly. It's too much and Kurt laughs for just a moment at how unfair life is to give him this much pleasure and snatch it away in what he knows will be seconds.

Not that it matters, not when it feels like this and Blaine is over-sexed and exhausted under him. Kurt leans forward and down and covers Blaine's body, hooking his chin over Blaine's shoulder, sliding his arms under Blaine's and then resting his open mouth against Blaine's jaw.

Blaine whimpers when Kurt fucks into him the first time, one long, delicious stroke that makes Kurt see stars. He whimpers again and twists on the second thrust and then settles into shivering and panting as Kurt lets his hips fuck hard and fast and inevitable.

"God you're perfect," spills from Kurt's lips. "So fucking hot," and then, "So fucking beautiful," and then, "So fucking mine." Kurt fucks him hard and holds on for as long as he can, just a matter of seconds, and then he simply lets go.

He buries himself and lets his hips jerk against the curve of Blaine's ass, feels the frissons of electricity race their way up his spine and out to his fingertips, making them dig into Blaine's shoulders. He comes hard and fast —jesus, _fuck_—blissful and loud and tearing him apart. He doesn't hold any of it back, fucking in deeper and harder and wringing the last of it from him until the exhaustion overtakes him and he recognizes faintly that this is what it might have felt for Blaine.

He collapses there for several long seconds. Blaine mumbles something at him about not being able to breathe and Kurt forces his limbs to work just long enough to slide agonizingly slowly from Blaine's ass.

He's still hard, but everything twinges with too-muchness. He pulls the condom off and leaves it—rather disgustingly, he notes—beside Blaine's. Then he collapses right back into the heady heat of Blaine's skin, pressing up against him and covering him with a leg thrown over his ass and his arms pulling him in.

It takes Kurt a confusing few moments to realize the vibrations he's feeling are from Blaine's silent laughter. He can't be bothered lifting his head but he mumbles, "What?" into Blaine's hair.

"I don't think I'm ever going to be able to move again."

Kurt laughs then and his brain feels more sluggish than it has all night. Sleep tugs at him. "Such a bad thing?"

"Nuh." Blaine somehow manages to grab the sheet and pull it up and over and Kurt's heart beats hard to think Blaine isn't letting him go just yet. "You know, you're more stunning now than I ever thought anyone could be." Kurt feels Blaine's mouth press messily to his shoulder. "Not ever," he adds.

Kurt sighs and has to blink once heavily to remember where he is. "You too," he says, and it sounds silly but he means it.

There's silence and they both slip in and out of sleep, their minds there but their muscles still trying to unknot, their hearts trying to find a proper rhythm.

"I fucking hate London," Blaine mumbles.

"Yeah?" Kurt replies, arms tightening around Blaine's back. "You want me to stay?"

Blaine hums a "yes" against Kurt's skin and then nuzzles closer.

And before Kurt can find an answer, Blaine begins to softly snore.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Eleven**

Blaine wakes up first. It's still dark outside, so he can't have slept long. His whole body aches, though, and his mouth is dry and tastes of stale wine and cheese. He would slip from the bed immediately, except Kurt has a leg thrown over his hips, calf tucked between his, and both hands resting flush and holding against his skin. Kurt mumbles something and shifts, and Blaine takes the opportunity to push him away.

He pads through the house on quiet feet, drinks a glass of water, and then brings two back to the bed. He lets himself look at Kurt, naked and barely covered and beautiful. Then he slips into his small bathroom and brushes his teeth.

He doesn't hesitate before sliding back under the sheets and wrapping both arms around Kurt's waist, kissing his cool lips against the hot skin of Kurt's shoulder and watching him smile without waking.

* * *

When Kurt wakes up, it is well and truly morning. There is sun pouring through the window, and several floors below he can hear the bustle of New York. He goes to stretch and everything twinges, his back, his thighs, his ass. He's been well fucked and when he looks down at the mussed hair of Blaine, resting on his chest, he grins as he remembers it. He feels completely gross, though, unused to falling asleep with anyone before taking a shower and brushing out his hair.

It takes half an hour for Blaine to rouse, a soft sniffle alerting Kurt that he's waking, and then Blaine presses his mouth to the centre of Kurt's chest and he winces to think what it must taste like. When Blaine turns his face up though, Kurt forgets about most of that, relishing the shift of Blaine's weight across him and the way Blaine's eyes are bright and his mouth smiling.

"Morning," Blaine mumbles, ducking down to press another kiss over Kurt's heart.

Kurt lets out a breath he hadn't known he had been holding. "Good morning," he says back.

When Blaine slides up Kurt to kiss him, though, Kurt turns his head to the side with a rueful smile. "I need to brush my teeth," he mumbles as Blaine settles for kissing the corner of his jaw.

"I don't mind," Blaine murmurs.

Kurt laughs and runs his tongue over his teeth, feeling the disgusting layer of fur there. "Trust me, you'd mind."

Blaine shrugs and pouts and kisses Kurt's temple. Kurt catches a whiff of his peppermint breath and wonders when in the night he wasn't in Kurt's arms.

"I kind of really need a shower, too," Kurt says, trying not to open his mouth too wide and feeling self-conscious. "If that's not too big a request."

One last kiss to Kurt's chin and Blaine rolls off him, onto his back. "Go for it. I'll um—" He has slid to the edge of the bed and remembered exactly how naked he is and how much his muscles ache. It's nothing Kurt hasn't seen a hundred times before, nothing he didn't see a hell of a lot closer last night. Bravely, Blaine stumbles to his feet and rolls his shoulders. "I'll get you a towel and a toothbrush."

Kurt is staring at him, rolled up on his side and letting his eyes rake from Blaine's long, slender feet all the way to his lop-sided curls. "Thanks," he says.

Blaine grabs his underwear on the way out into the hall and spends five seconds leaning there, catching his breath. Then he slides his boxer briefs up his legs and moves to the small linen closet in the hall. By the time he gets back to the bedroom, Kurt is gone and the hum of water can be heard from the bathroom.

The door is still half-open, so Blaine walks in. He leaves the towel on the closed toilet seat and finds an unopened toothbrush under the sink, leaves that besides his toothpaste, and then he hovers.

He likes to imagine Kurt is humming, or would be, if he were in his own bathroom. The barely there silhouette afforded him by the closed shower curtain is not particularly interesting, but the idea that behind it, Kurt is standing naked and wet really, really is.

"Do you still sing in the shower?" Blaine asks without thinking.

He hears Kurt swear and drop something, and guiltily realizes Kurt probably didn't even know he was there.

"Sometimes," Kurt says after a few moments.

It's uncomfortable and awkward and asking him to sing right now would be really, really strange. Stepping in beside him would be less strange, but probably a little too presumptuous.

"I'm going to go and make coffee," Blaine says, moving to the doorway. "Take as long as you need."

He trips backwards out the door.

* * *

Kurt starts to sing just as Blaine's slicing through an apple. He has no idea what it is. It's muffled and quiet, but he's singing, and Blaine grins.

* * *

They swap into the bathroom quickly, Blaine hyper aware of how much of a mess he is in when Kurt sweeps back into the kitchen in just his jeans. His body is wet and shining, his hair pushed back and pulled into soft spikes with the water. Blaine stares at the hair on his forearms and his even darker jaw line, and suddenly feels pretty stupid caked with dried sweat and come and saliva, standing there in pink and purple boxer briefs. He can't look away, though.

"Guess I should do the same," he mumbles as Kurt waits for him at the other end of the kitchen.

"Yep," comes the easy answer, Kurt's eyes dancing as they slip down Blaine's body once more.

Blaine swallows and is about to move when something shocking occurs to him. "You'll still be here when I'm done?" he asks, momentarily horrified.

Kurt's smile gets wider and he tells him, "Of course."

"Okay." Blaine makes to walk past Kurt, into the bathroom, to get clean.

At least he would, except Kurt steps to the side and drags him in by the hips, pressing them close and kissing him before he even knows what's happening. Kurt kisses him until their knees are knocking, and Blaine's sure his chest is wet and Kurt's getting dirty again, and then Kurt pulls back and smiles.

"You smell like me," is all Blaine can say.

"I borrowed some of your stuff, I hope you don't mind."

Blaine doesn't dignify that with a response. He just kisses him once, hard, and then pushes him out of the way and marches towards the bathroom with a huff.

* * *

They drink coffee and share three sliced up apples at the kitchen counter. Kurt has found his Henley and slipped it back on, letting it stick a little to the wet skin of his chest. Blaine can't stop staring at the contours.

Blaine gets dressed in bright blue capris and a polo shirt. When Kurt raises an eyebrow, he just reiterates that he dresses as a lawyer during the week. They eat mostly in silence, except for Blaine pausing to tell Kurt he usually gets bagels on the way to work, or goes in early and starves himself until lunch. Kurt tells him he knows that because Blaine wrote it in an email a few weeks ago.

Blaine bites his tongue and doesn't offer to grab Kurt's hand and take him directly to the best bagel place in the city. Instead, he asks Kurt what he'll be doing with his dog Max while he's in London. Kurt tells Blaine about his assistant, Alexis, and her fondness for the dog, and rather than being the segue into the conversation they're meant to be having, it just makes Blaine say he really wants to meet Max at some point.

* * *

They are on their second cup of coffee and they've run out of apples. Blaine's stomach grumbles and he wonders if left over duck is an acceptable breakfast.

"How's you head?" Kurt asks.

Blaine tries to remember at what point last night he managed to hit his head and only succeeds in remembering where every other ache on his body came from. He shifts from one foot to the other and then realizes, "Oh you mean the wine?" Kurt nods. "I didn't really have that much."

They drank three bottles between them, but that's not the point. Smiling, Kurt agrees, "Neither did I."

They fall back into silence, watching each other and wondering.

* * *

"So about last night…" It's Kurt who finally says it, staring at the bottom of his cup and swirling the dregs of his coffee around.

Blaine's head snaps up, even though he has known it was coming for hours, he still isn't ready for this conversation. "Do you regret it?" he asks.

"No."

Blaine smiles and breathes. "Me neither. "

"Good," Kurt mumbles. Looking up, he catches Blaine's gaze slipping down to watch Kurt's fingers on the rim of the cup. "It would be insane if I offered to blow off Vivienne Westwood and stay in New York, wouldn't it?" He's not seriously thinking about it, because that would be crazy.

Blaine laughs, but it's tinged with bitterness. "After just one night? "

"Yeah." Kurt has to agree, every ounce of logic says he has to. "But…"

"I would never ask you to." Blaine cuts across him quickly, reaching out and grabbing his hand. "Or let you. Don't start thinking about doing anything so ridiculous."

"We could though." Kurt watches him with blue eyes that seem so serious, so real, that Blaine, for just a second, thinks maybe they should.

Kurt could blow off the career opportunity of a lifetime. Or Blaine could throw all his hard work at Stanford and the DA's office out the window and move to London or…

Blaine stares at him and realizes that none of that is the point. "Are you proposing that we get back together? Pick up exactly where we left off, just—" He hesitates, wary of the word, having not used it in so, so long. "Just fall right back in love and do the long distance thing for god knows how long? Again?"

"Would you?" Kurt asks without even thinking about it.

But they've tried this, ten years ago, and it was a complete disaster. Another year without Kurt right there next to him terrifies Blaine. "I have no right to ask for that," he says.

There's another long pause during which they both stare into their empty coffee cups and contemplate.

"You're really not giving me a choice," Kurt says.

Blaine doesn't understand exactly what he means. There is so much choice here and only a few aspects are immutable. Kurt needs to go to London. Blaine needs to stay in New York. Last night was amazing. Kurt, Blaine thinks, can do what he wants, and Blaine will do exactly what he needs to.

"I'm going to wait, okay?" Blaine says, voice shaky and his hand continues to hold Kurt's tightly, even though by now they've both got sweaty palms.

Kurt's eyebrows shoot up and his mouth gapes a little. "For a year?" he says, and then begins to say more.

But Blaine waves him off. He shakes his head and speaks before Kurt has any chance to argue. "No. Let me get this out because I've just kind of realized it and it needs to be said." He pauses, ready for Kurt to argue, but Kurt just shuts his mouth and waits. "Last night I had more fun, I was more relaxed, I was straight up _happier_ than I've been since I was eighteen. Probably more than I've ever been. Not just because of the sex. Not just because of you or the conversation. All of it." Blaine swallows. "I'm the one that screwed this up the first time. I'm the one that cheated and threw all of it away—"

Now Kurt does interrupt, shaking his head and grabbing at Blaine's other hand across the counter, holding both tight. "No, we talked about this back then and we agreed we both fucked up. I… I hate that you cheated, but I hate that I didn't notice how far you'd slipped, how unhappy you were and—"

"You're right, we worked all this out. Ten years ago is not the point now. The point now is _now _and—"

"Yes," Kurt agrees, and they hold each other's gaze in a stalemate and then drop each other's hands and wipe off the sweat on their pants.

Blaine's whole reality has shifted in the space of a few minutes, but it feels so real. "I'll wait," he says again. "It's only a year and we will both be incredibly busy in our own little worlds and… and if you find someone. Or need someone." He shrugs, but there's more jealousy in him now than there was last night when Kurt was tangled up in him and showing off the tricks other men had doubtlessly taught him. Blaine pushes it down, though. "If you need someone, you do it. Do whatever you like. I'm going to wait, though, and when you come back—if you come back—we will see where we're at."

"That's ridiculous," Kurt tells him.

Blaine smiles ruefully and brushes him thumb over the dip of Kurt's wrist. "It's no more ridiculous than thinking I'll be able to write this off as a one night stand and let you go forever. Than thinking I'll be able to find anything even remotely as good with someone else. If I wait, I'll at least have hope, right?" And he means that, he's not just saying it, or falling apart and rambling, he's thinking about best case scenarios and waiting is it. It's the most he can offer himself.

Kurt's teeth have clamped down on his bottom lip and Blaine can see him thinking. When Kurt swallows, something old and ugly inside Blaine rears its head and makes him prepare for rejection.

"How is that arrangement any better than what we had when I left you in Lima?"

"It wasn't you back then, as cliché as that sounds. It was me, I was… I can wait, and I can be happy waiting, I think." _So long as there's hope. _Perhaps that's it. Blaine has learned how to hope, how to hold onto optimism.

"Really?" Kurt sounds doubtful and he's mentally skipping over twelve months of being alone and unsure. It doesn't sound particularly happy and for the hundredth time since he woke up, Kurt debates saying no to London. "You'd really wait for me? Based on one semi-drunk night?" he says instead.

"How about a decade of not quite feeling right, and then a night of feeling like I was exactly where I was meant to be?" Blaine challenges.

Kurt can feel it too. He blushes and pushes back the bits of fringe that have fallen across his forehead in a move that makes him look like a teenager for a brief moment. "What if I wanted to do it differently?"

"How?" Blaine asks, and of course, he allows himself to hope a little harder.

"Not make you wait." Kurt bites his lip again. "That doesn't sound pleasant." Blaine doesn't say anything. "We could date."

Blaine's face splits into a grin and then the crease is back between his eyes. "You mean long distance again?" he asks.

"I've got five days before I leave," Kurt counters.

"And then?"

"And then long distance. But… better than when we were teenagers and not particularly good at it." Kurt's eyes drop and he raises his cup to take a stalling sip before remembering it's empty. "If that was something you might—"

"Kurt, last night was…" Blaine trails off and his cheeks flush red. It settles over his skin in a different shade to the one Kurt remembers from when they were young and experimenting. "Would it be completely crazy?" he whispers.

"Yeah," Kurt tells him. "It really, really would."

Five days, and Kurt probably has a mountain of work and packing and organizing to do. He thinks, London isn't that far, maybe they can still do weekends. Maybe this is exactly the second chance they deserve. Just ten years late.

Blaine laughs lightly, mostly to himself, and Kurt tilts his head and waits.

When Blaine finally speaks, he says, "Okay," and then "Okay," again. "Okay, you're probably going to think I'm even crazier but…" His throat tightens and his mouth feels dry and he's caught in a long, hard stare. But maybe, just maybe, this is it: the beginning of everything. He grabs Kurt's hand again and interlaces their fingers.

"Blaine?" Kurt prompts.

A deep breath, and you don't _say_ these things this quickly, you don't even think them, but five days and London and Blaine looks up from their hands to Kurt, right there, watching him back. "I'm in love with you."

Kurt's breath catches, and that should be too much because he's been promising himself since Blaine kissed him that he wouldn't say it, and now Blaine has. He has to say it back, but Blaine's face is a picture of happiness, smiling until it looks like it hurts and dipping his head to kiss at Kurt's knuckles.

Now Blaine does start rambling. "I never ever got over you and I don't think I wanted to. I grew up, and I changed, but god, I never once got over you. And now you're here and maybe saying you feel enough to try again—"

"I do!"

"That maybe you feel the same way?" Blaine asks, sounding shy, but so, _so _happy.

"Yes!" Kurt wants to tell him everything, but he feels like he's about to start crying and that would be stupid, and anyway Blaine is still talking.

"—And it is _insane!_ We might hate each other. We might not have enough left in common or maybe too much. It might not work at all, but god I _want _it to. Ridiculously, I want so badly to try." Blaine pauses to look across at Kurt and watch his chest rise and fall with fast, shallow breaths, to see the grin spread wider across his face. He's holding his hand too tight, making just one more part of him ache with it.

"We have five days," Blaine points out.

Kurt echoes him wistfully, "Five days," like it's all the time in the world and not nearly enough. It isn't. "We can visit each other for weekends, if you like? And maybe holidays… if you still go back to Ohio. And you always used to be able to talk to me for hours on the phone even before I was in New York."

Blaine nods. "And Skype. And texts and email and whatever else we need. If we want it."

"I want it," Kurt says without hesitating. "I want you."

"This is ridiculous," Blaine says again, but they're doing it. "We're like… dating?"

Kurt nods, trying on the idea, feeling young and stupid, and loving it. "We're like _boyfriends_."

And that seems to be that. Five days of undoubtedly hectic togetherness and getting on each other's nerves and kissing each other as much as they want, as much as they can. Then, a year of penance for waiting a decade to admit what now seems so obvious.

Blaine drops Kurt's hand to the counter only so he can walk around and face him. He grasps Kurt's hips, turning him and pulling him in close and loving that he can. All of a sudden, he can do this as much as he wants, forever, if that's what they want.

Kurt's mouth chases his and Blaine ducks and leans and keeps it from him, making him smile and then giggle, and only then does Blaine lean forward and capture his lips against his own, a hand up his back and in his hair, tilting him just right so that the kiss doesn't have to end, but can only deepen.

They kiss and kiss, and it tastes like coffee. They stop only when Kurt's stomach makes an unseemly growl and Blaine cracks up laughing at him. He pulls back, but Kurt keeps his arms looped around Blaine's neck and Blaine keeps his around Kurt's waist and they settle forehead to forehead, exchanging soft Eskimo kisses.

"I need a proper breakfast," Kurt admits. "And I promised myself I'd get across town to the other store today and make sure it was going to run while I was away. "

Blaine kisses him.

"But I don't want to say goodbye to you again. Not yet. I—"

Blaine kisses him harder, swallowing whatever Kurt was about to say. When he pulls back he whispers, "Then don't."

"It's a Saturday," Kurt says. "You don't have any work?"

"A little," Blaine admits. "There are some depositions I need to go over and a few papers I should probably read. If you'll have me, I'll shuffle some things on Monday and get that day mostly off. What time on Wednesday is your flight?"

"Afternoon."

"I can get the morning off then," Blaine says. "If you want. That's… wow. That was kind of presumptuous of me."

"Be presumptuous," Kurt replies. "We've got five days and we should spend as much of them together as we can. Okay?"

Blaine nods against his cheek and smiles as they sway to no music at all, standing in Blaine's little kitchen, and wrapped up in each other.

* * *

**A/N: **We are getting closer and closer to the end! Though I will take this moment to announce that Chapter 14 ballooned with last minute additional footage and birthed a Chapter 15. So four more chapters and a little epilogue. Huzzuh! As usual: thank you to everyone who reviews! I'm loving hearing where you think this is going!


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter Twelve**

Kurt's stomach starts to growl again and they end up laughing through their kisses and it feels amazing. They find their shoes and Blaine takes Kurt to his favorite bagel place. They talk about London a little, though neither of them really wants to. They drink more coffee and talk and stare at each other in a way, Blaine remarks, that is probably making the people around them feel a little queasy.

Kurt punches him playfully in the shoulder and then takes Blaine back to his place.

* * *

Blaine holds his hand on the subway ride over, and then he kisses him in the elevator, hands daring to slip down his back and over his ass. They are entirely captivated by each other, intent on getting naked, all the way hard, and as close and as messy as possible. Blaine can't keep his hands off him and Kurt struggles to get his key in the door. Then the door gives way and they stumble inside, Kurt trying to grab at Blaine as he brushes past him, committed to dragging him in for a proper, endless kiss.

Within seconds Blaine is dropping to his knees with wide, excited eyes, except he's not looking at Kurt at all. There's the sound of dog paws on the hardwood and Max comes skidding around the corner.

At first it's adorable, the way Blaine picks up the dog and lets him lick his face and then promptly finds them a sofa to sit down and cuddle. Kurt stands in the doorway and watches, fondly at first, as Blaine coos and kisses and pets.

"What is he?" Blaine asks, sounding far too in awe.

"He's a dog," Kurt deadpans.

Blaine rolls his eyes at Max. "What breed, Kurt?"

"A puggle," Kurt says, moving closer, watching and trying to fight the grin off his face. "A pug beagle mix."

"Oh my god," Blaine all but squeals. "That is so cute!" He throws a look over his shoulder and Kurt nods.

Max isn't even, technically, allowed on the couch.

"You're so cute!" Blaine exclaims, and he Eskimo kisses a frantic Max in his lap.

Kurt lets this go on for as long as he can stand, slowly shifting from finding it adorable to fondly being amused to being rather jealous of his little dog.

It takes Kurt's Henley being thrown across the room and landing draped over Max's head, to make Blaine look up towards where Kurt's still leaning against the door frame. With wide, brown eyes, flicking from shocked to amused to turned on, Blaine very quickly dumps Max unceremoniously on the floor.

"You're cute, too," he admits, chasing Kurt down the hall.

He pushes him up against a wall and kisses him hard, shutting Max out of the bedroom with an apologetic look.

* * *

Kurt doesn't make it to his boutique store that day, and Blaine forgets entirely about the depositions. They spend more time talking and tracing inane patterns across each other's skin than they do actually having sex. They both lose track of how many orgasms they've shared and why it even matters before night falls. Hours of it, hours of each other. Bodies clinging and tangled in Kurt's bed until they're too sore and hungry again, eating Chinese food straight from the container, mostly naked, and still in Kurt's bed.

* * *

That Sunday, Kurt finally takes Blaine to one of his stores. He kisses him on the cheek and directs him to the plush sofas spread between the expansive dressing rooms at the back. "This shouldn't take too long," Kurt promises and lingers with his lips close to Blaine's jaw. When he finally pulls away it is only to blink once and then duck back in and press another kiss to his mouth.

After that, Blaine watches him work without interfering. He sits on the sofa and lets his eyes appreciate the off-whites and greys of the store walls, the abstract paintings scattered between the racks, splashes of bright blues and reds and oranges that compliment and offset the color of the clothes. Then there are the clothes themselves, the centerpiece of the store, dark suits and dresses slowly transitioning into brighter, lighter things. Suits in colors hardly anyone would dare to wear with embroidered patterns and unusual collars.

Eventually, he can't resist and, smiling at Kurt, Blaine stands and wanders, letting his fingers runs over the fabrics as he marvels at the things Kurt makes.

"Do you ever wear your own suits?" Blaine asks when they walk out, into the New York street.

Kurt looks at him, an eyebrow arched. "Not terribly often," he admits. "I don't usually have good enough reasons to."

Neither one of them would dare say it, but there are fantasies of weddings being written in both their heads.

* * *

Blaine goes home Sunday afternoon. He gets caught up for a full ten minutes at the threshold of Kurt's apartment, holding his face in his hands and kissing him over and over, trying to convince himself that one last quick moment, naked and together, isn't unreasonable at all.

Finally, Kurt pushes him out and closes the door. Blaine goes home and reads the depositions, then the papers, and then all of it again, taking notes. It slips past midnight and into Monday and his eyelids feel heavy and his muscles feel too tight. He changes and slips into his still unmade bed. He can smell Kurt and can't for the life of him get to sleep.

He debates sending a text for a few minutes, then does it anyway.

**Blaine to Kurt**

_I can't sleep without you next to me. _

He is sitting at the kitchen counter taking his second mouthful of a beer when his phone vibrates.

**Kurt to Blaine**

_Then come over. _

Blaine catches a cab through midtown and is buzzing himself into Kurt's apartment building within half an hour. When Kurt opens the door he's in sweatpants only, his hair is mussed and he has a cup of tea in his hand. "Come in," is all he says.

Max barks like he already recognizes Blaine.

* * *

There are more boxes packed up everywhere than there were the day before and Kurt's laptop is open with so many unanswered emails, Blaine wonders if he's imposing. But Kurt assures him he isn't and says he couldn't sleep either.

That's the first night they slip into bed too tired to do anything more than share one quick kiss and then fall asleep.

Blaine makes up for it though, waking Kurt up with his mouth around Kurt's cock, sucking and licking until Kurt groans and arches and Blaine knows he's awake. Kurt twists in the sheets and mumbles 'Good morning,' nudging Max off the side of the bed with his leg. Blaine gets him off as slow as he dares, committing to memory every moan Kurt makes, every vein under his tongue, and hoping he'll never forget any of it.

When Kurt comes he's loud, arching off the bed and twisting Blaine's hair in a way that makes Blaine swear he'll never wear gel again. He swallows him down and then climbs up Kurt's body and kisses him until he's capable of thinking again. Then Kurt flips him over and gets him off with a few rough strokes of his hand, never once stopping kissing him.

To say thank you, Kurt makes Blaine one of the few things he can cook well, French toast, not minding so much when Blaine sits on the floor with his back against a cupboard and plays with Max as Kurt cooks.

After that, Blaine goes home and into work for a few hours because he has to, moping around the office and waiting for his lunch break and the chance to go home, get changed, and then find Kurt again. Except, Kurt surprises him in one of the main foyers, grinning from ear to ear and looking perfect in cream colored pants and a light blazer. Kurt laughs at him when he runs over and kisses him without really thinking, the eyes of several people who know Blaine tracking him with interest, and the eyes of everybody else just vaguely amused by the young lawyer and his stunningly beautiful boyfriend embracing outside the law courts.

All of it already feels instinctive.

When they manage to let each other go—propriety demanding Blaine do it, hunger for lunch convincing Kurt—Kurt holds Blaine by the shoulders and looks him up and down. Kurt then makes him spin in his nothing-grey work suit and tells him it looks good on him, even though he can think of a dozen cuts and colors that would look better.

Blaine just pulls a face.

They get smoked chicken baguettes and eat outside, holding hands and still watching each other. Afterwards, as they walk across Columbus Park, Kurt leans in close to whisper something scandalous in Blaine's ear. "And what kind of outrageous underwear are you wearing, today?"

Blaine blushes so hard Kurt giggles, and then Blaine refuses to answer him. So, Kurt flirts too much and twhisks him across town to his other store and bundles Blaine up in one of the dressing rooms at the back. He tickles his sides and kisses behind his ear and slides his hands quickly under the waistband of Blaine's suit-pants, shoving them down to get a look.

"Seriously?" Kurt exclaims, and then he's giggling again, undoing Blaine's pants properly and letting them fall to Blaine's ankles. He giggles some more, and Blaine blushes, and then Kurt is tugging on the waistband and letting it snap back against Blaine's skin. "Oh my god, what _are_ you?"

Blaine spends the taxi ride home defending the pink love hearts design.

* * *

On Tuesday it really begins to sink in: This is it. This is the last twenty four hours together. Blaine stays at Kurt's even though it means he has to get up at 5am to make it downtown to work at a reasonable time. He means to slip quietly from Kurt's arms and kiss him on the cheek without waking him, but Kurt stirs as soon as he moves. He won't let Blaine leave the bed without kissing him properly, and then he follows him into the shower. They spend half an hour going over four days of bruises and bite marks and scratches.

"I don't remember giving you this."

Followed by, "I do," and another owning kiss. They get off in each other's hands and Blaine races to work.

* * *

That night, there is dinner and dancing and an alcohol induced nap before they wake up and realize it's the last night. They don't feel anywhere near as sad as they think perhaps they should.

"I'll miss you," Blaine tells him.

Kurt nods and slides his pants off his legs, already yawning again. "You too."

Blaine sighs. "I think we're going to be just fine," he admits, And he thinks maybe that's why it doesn't seem to hurt so much.

"Yeah," Kurt mumbles, growing impatient and moving to help Blaine with his clothes. "Yeah, me too."

Kurt begs Blaine to fuck him slowly, until they're both sweating with it and twisting, their skin burns so hot they don't know where one of them finishes and the other begins. Blaine babbles out a hundred promises until Kurt leans back over his shoulder and pulls his hair and kisses him to make him be quiet. They lay together, slowly moving together, until it's too much and Kurt comes into the fist of Blaine's hand and Blaine slips out of him to come across the curve of his ass.

They fall asleep without cleaning up.

* * *

Blaine won't let him leave the bed the next morning. He gets bagels and fruit delivered because that's the lifestyle on the Upper East Side, or so he tells Kurt. When Blaine stops kissing him long enough to slide underwear on— floral, disgustingly, hideously, perfectly floral—and collect the delivery from the guy knocking on Kurt's door, Kurt blushes and giggle, making a mental note never to buy from them again. Blaine bounces back onto the bed with bags of food and an innocent smile.

They forget to have sex, though. The entire morning, they talk and talk about barely anything, and stop to make out like teenagers, and then talk some more. Kurt drags Blaine into the shower with him and says he has to strip the bed before he leaves because the movers are coming tomorrow for the last of his furniture and won't be pleased if he doesn't. So they talk in the shower, and touch everywhere they've learnt in the last five days, and then pull the sheets off the bed together.

The apartment is empty, leased to one of Kurt's friends for the next nine months. All of Kurt's things are either being shipped to London or have been put in storage and now there is only them, the bed, and Kurt's luggage at the front door. And Max of course, racing around the wide-open spaces and barking at Blaine because he knows Blaine will bend to scratch behind his ears.

"Where are the sheets going?" Blaine asks when they're done and the sheets are scrunched up in a plastic bag.

"My assistant is going to get them cleaned and then they'll go to goodwill along with the duvet." Kurt shrugs, there's not much special about the set. "It's too much effort to get her to throw them in storage as well, and they're getting a bit ratty."

"Can I have them?" Blaine asks. "Not in a creepy way or anything…" he trails off. "Actually yeah, it is creepy. I'd like to put them on my bed and be able to smell you there. That's creepy, isn't it?"

Kurt laughs at him and crawls across the naked mattress to kneel in front of him. "It's romantic."

Blaine mumbles, "What kind of laundry soap do you use?"

Kurt laughs at him, but tells him a moment later.

* * *

Alexis, Kurt's assistant, turns up just before 2pm. She looks Blaine up and down and seems slightly confused when Kurt introduces him, but then Max is trotting out and she's completely distracted. She scratches behind his ears and double checks that all his things are in the box by the door.

Then Blaine, fidgeting, leans into Kurt's side and whispers something. When he pulls back, Alexis is even more confused to see Kurt grinning.

"Alexis," Kurt says, stepping towards her and fixing her with his boss-eyes. "Blaine is going to be playing godparent while I'm away."

She arches an eyebrow and turns her gaze on Blaine.

"To Max," Kurt adds, as though that wasn't clear.

Now it is even more bemusing, because Kurt gave her the third degree before he agreed to let her have him, and she's been working with him for three years. She has never heard of Blaine and yet here he is, suddenly every bit Kurt's other half.

"I could take him on some weekends," Blaine adds, and he sounds enthusiastic, happy, and he is kind of gorgeous with his puppy-dog eyes and his grin. "Or I could just take him for walks. If you need to go out of town or… anything. I could help." He sounds so keen, and when Alexis looks from him to Kurt and back, Blaine's eyes are wide and such a deep brown that she immediately softens.

"I don't think I could go a whole year without seeing him," Blaine admits, and now he's looking at Kurt. Still the same soulful, loving look.

"Sounds good to me," Alexis agrees, more intrigued than anything else. She takes Blaine's offered phone and keys in her number. "Call me tonight and we will work something out."

"Fantastic." Blaine's face splits into a grin.

Alexis gives Kurt another hard look, one that says that she expects a bit of back-story soon, and then clips Max's leash onto his collar. "I'll see you when I see you!" she says to Kurt and kisses him on the cheek.

Once she's gone, Blaine crosses to behind Kurt, in the suddenly empty-feeling apartment, and wraps his arms around Kurt's waist. "Thank you," he mumbles.

* * *

They kiss on the stoop of Kurt's apartment building, cab waiting to take him to JFK, Blaine's phone vibrating in his pocket with calls from work. They hold hands and stand too close and when Blaine mumbles, "I love you," Kurt mumbles it back.

"I'll see you in a year," Blaine says, beaming.

"I'll talk to you tomorrow," Kurt counters. "And I'm sure I'll see you in not too long at all."

Blaine kisses him once more and forces himself to let Kurt go.

* * *

When Kurt gets to the hotel that will be his home for at least a few weeks while his apartment is organized, there are flowers waiting for him, red and yellow roses, however predictable that might be.

There's a note.

_I know we've kind of only had the one date. But it did go for five days. And it was pretty fantastic. Enjoy London. Call me when you can. _

_Your long-distance boyfriend, Blaine, xoxo._

Kurt pulls his phone out and doesn't care what time it is in New York. He sends a text quickly.

**Kurt to Blaine**

_Loved the flowers. Love you. xoxo Kurt_

Ten minutes later his phone vibrates in his pocket and Blaine's face appears on the screen. Kurt laughs to himself and answers immediately, flopping back onto the hotel bed and breathing deep as soon as he hears Blaine's voice.

* * *

**A/N: **Is this fic devolving into a fluff fest? Is it? Maybe… It has picked up yet another chapter (I'm done! I swear!) and is now expected to have 16 plus the epilogue. Sorry about that. Keep enjoying it anyway and thank you so much to everyone who is reading this! I really hope you're enjoying it as much as I am enjoying writing it!


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N: **Thank you a million times over to everyone who has left me such awesome feedback on this fic! I really have been overwhelmed by how many of you are enjoying it for all it's angst then smut then fluff! I wish I could respond to all of you but posting this has just been a crazy big adventure and it's not over yet! The plan is to post the last three chapters and the epilogue within the next 72 hours though so stay tuned!

* * *

**Chapter Thirteen**

Blaine throws himself into his work. Again. He takes on a few extra cases and puts in extra hours chasing down leads that will amount to nothing and doing research he really doesn't need. He starts being the first one in the office, turning on the coffee machine, and the one that hangs back and wants to order take out.

But, he continues to smile, and he starts leaving his phone on top of whichever stack of paperwork is closest to him, grinning at it whenever it vibrates.

Eventually—if by eventually you mean about two weeks after Kurt leaves—he tells Emma the whole story. They've settled a case, and having gotten less than they wanted, are sitting close in a booth in the back of one of the darker bars just around the corner from the courts. They've both already had a little too much.

"What is up with you?" Emma eventually asks, watching his lips twitch up as he stares over the rim of his glass at the wall.

Blaine's eyes snap to hers before he bats his eyelashes and smirks. "Nothin."

Emma whacks him on the arm and Blaine sighs happily.

"I'm in love."

That makes Emma scoff and she's completely sure he's kidding. Because Emma knew him in the beginning, when there was Ben and then when there wasn't. She knows Blaine likes to say he thought he loved him, and she knows Blaine only dropped the L word after almost a year.

When Blaine just keeps smiling her expression eventually shifts from incredulous to intrigued and she asks, "Seriously?"

"Very seriously," Blaine says. "His name is Kurt. I met him in my sophomore year of high school when he came to spy on the all-boys a cappella group I was in."

That makes Emma crack up laughing again and Blaine takes his chance to signal the barman for two more drinks. When she calms down, Blaine tells her the whole story.

He doesn't stop until Emma has laughed some more and has almost cried. She has always known Blaine had a way with words, and with the truth, that could make people feel whatever he wanted them to, but this story is his best. She makes him promise to bring Kurt by the offices as soon as he's back from London, and then she kisses him on the cheek as they part ways for the evening.

* * *

About two months after Kurt left, Blaine manages to get a weekend clear. He works extra hours and begs a few favors, managing to get the Friday afternoon off as well and a late start on the Monday after. He gets away with it, he thinks, because the entire office is gossiping about him and his five day first date and his one year of long distance, and most of them like him enough to want to help.

The weekend is enough of a reason to delve into his small amount of savings and book a flight to London. He checks dates with Kurt and Kurt promises he will have the entire weekend free. Blaine can guess that Kurt will have to work equally hard to achieve that.

Blaine lands at Heathrow early Saturday morning and Kurt meets him at Kings Cross station before the mid-winter sun has even come up. They kiss right there at the top of the escalators and then Kurt takes his hand and leads him out to the chilly street.

They sit at the very front on the top level of a red double-decker bus, holding hands and hardly speaking, simply exchanging quick glances and soft smiles. Blaine stares at the buildings and the people, and Kurt takes his luggage for him when they switch buses and have to stand for the five minute ride to Kurt's block.

Kurt unlocks the front door of his apartment and pulls Blaine in, not giving him a moment to think or speak, just pushing the door shut behind them and then pushing Blaine back against it, kissing him hard, like he hasn't been able to do for months.

Kurt half-carries Blaine to the bedroom, over-eager and uncoordinated, and Blaine doesn't open his eyes until he's on his back, with Kurt above him, kissing him over and over and fitting his hands roughly to all the contours he had begun to forget.

They spend hours getting re-acquainted, searching with their mouths and hands and bodies, laughing and barely talking at all, except to tease and try to make the other laugh. Mostly, it's just sounds and tastes and, for a second date, a level of intimacy even more unbelievable than their first. When Blaine points that out, Kurt just laughs again.

Blaine naps and Kurt attempts to keep busy by neatening his already immaculate apartment. When Blaine wakes up, he tells Kurt off for letting him sleep at all. They leave the apartment and walk for hours, as far as they can, Kurt leading and Blaine following, staring up at things and bumping into tourists.

When it starts to get dark, Kurt takes Blaine to an expensive restaurant near Cambridge theatre and orders wine and food for them both.

"Was that too presumptuous?" Kurt asks once the waiter has left.

Blaine shrugs and smiles. "I'm meant to say yes, aren't I?"

Kurt shrugs back.

"You know what I like because I tell you pretty much every single night what I'm eating. It sounded delicious."

Kurt grins. The food is perfect.

"What are we doing tonight?" Blaine asks as the dessert is brought out and placed between them.

They're splitting it of course. Kurt laments the lack of good cheesecake in London, and Blaine asks again. "Tonight?" He kind of hopes they're just going back to bed.

"It's a surprise," Kurt tells him, eyes dancing in the light from the fire.

* * *

Kurt walks close to him as the night gets a little cooler, leading him through the loud, crowded streets of the Saturday night theatre district. Blaine lets him, saying more than once how different it is than New York. He wonders aloud how lost he would end up without Kurt to guide him, because he is so very used to a grid, and London is all back alleys and dead ends and curving roads.

They stop, eventually, in front of the newly built Ivy-Mout Theatre, Kurt waiting, watching, and reveling in the play of emotion over Blaine's face, which is pink from the walk.

"Oh my god, are you serious?" Blaine eventually exclaims, finally seeing the posters for the recently revived West Side Story.

Kurt nods, his eyes dancing. "I have connections."

* * *

They catch a cab home and Kurt whispers against Blaine's mouth that London cabbies have seen so much worse. They're both hard and giggling by the time Kurt gets his door open. They get off fast, spending too much time on kissing and laughing, and too little on actually remembering to try to find a rhythm to their pleasure.

* * *

Sunday, Kurt assures Blaine, is just as much for sleeping in and being lazy in London as it is in New York. Blaine corrects him, pointing out that Sunday mornings are his usual weekly date with Max, and then Kurt teases him about being over-eager and shows him the email from Alexis that details all of Blaine's finer attributes.

Blaine kisses him to shut him up and can't help but blush.

* * *

"I don't miss talking to you as much as I think I should," Blaine confides between kisses, lying heavy across Kurt's naked body, their half-hard, slowly recovering cocks caught deliciously between them.

Kurt pushes him up and stares. "Me either," he admits. "I think it's because we talk every single day. Probably more than is healthy."

It's true. They email and text and call and Skype. They share details so mundane that Blaine can't even be bothered rereading what he writes before sending it, even though he knows that when he gets the same mundane daily accounts back from Kurt, he reads them through twice.

"I miss being with you, though," Blaine says, rocking into him, kissing his cheek.

Kurt knows he doesn't just mean the sex, or the kissing, or the being in the same space at the same time. There is something so much more there. "Me too."

"I guess this is it until Thanksgiving," Blaine sighs.

"Christmas," Kurt corrects him, having consciously decided to wait until they were together to break that particularly heart-breaking piece of news. "There's no Thanksgiving over here and I couldn't afford to take the time even if there was." Blaine looks sad for the first time since he got there. "You're going back to Lima?"

"I wanted you in New York, all to myself." Sighing heavily, Blaine kisses Kurt's shoulder and rallies. "Christmas, then?"

Kurt nods. "Back in Lima, we can split your time between my family and yours, if you like."

Blaine sighs again. "I'd rather spend it mostly with yours, to be honest." Then he thinks of something he's been avoiding asking via email for weeks. He kisses Kurt's neck and asks, "Do you really think you're dad is happy about me being… back?"

Kurt laughs. "I Skyped him especially to tell him about a month ago. You should have seen his face."

Blaine is about to ask what exactly that means when his phone vibrates on the bedside table and he buries his face in Kurt's neck. "Can you?" he asks, because Kurt's arms seem longer and his hands are too snuggly fitted to Kurt's waist for him to want to move an inch.

Laughing, Kurt stretches to grab the phone for him. "Who's Patrick?"

Blaine's head snaps up. "Seriously?" he asks.

Kurt can only see shock in Blaine's expression and shakes his head quickly, "No I'm—"

Blaine's heart skips a beat because ten years ago this would totally be about jealousy and mistrust. Now is different, though, and Kurt just seems inquisitive, still smiling. "I mean, seriously, Patrick Hunt, who I haven't spoken to in months, is messaging me now."

Kurt reads the message for him and arches an eyebrow. "A little birdy told me you were in London? Obviously you don't need me for love life advice since you didn't even tell me you were visiting?" Kurt watches Blaine's face turn red as he nuzzles closer into Kurt's skin. "Who's Patrick?" Kurt teases.

"Oh, he will want to meet you," Blaine admits, looking up and resting his chin on his hand over Kurt's chest. Then he starts to chew his lip.

Kurt waits patiently while Blaine tries to remember how much of his sexual history Kurt knows from two month's of emails.

"Patrick was a TA at Stanford. He was a good friend—" Blaine hesitates, not sure how to phrase this. "We slept together a bit."

Kurt scoffs and looks down at Blaine. "He was _that_ TA?" Blaine shrugs—so obviously he's told Kurt some of it. "And he would want to meet me… why?"

It still doesn't feel like jealousy, and Blaine would be smiling broadly if he wasn't mentally running through worst case scenarios in which Kurt meets Patrick. "He was kind of rooting for you… us."

"While you were at Stanford?" Kurt asks, incredulously.

"Yep."

* * *

They meet Patrick in a pub that Kurt's never heard of. He's up the back, dressed in a suit far too nice for a Sunday afternoon. He hugs Blaine tight and actually has the audacity to ruffle his hair while Kurt just looks from one to the other.

Then Patrick turns to him and grins and offers his hand. "Hi, I'm Patrick."

"Kurt," Kurt responds, not rudely, just being cautious.

Patrick nods and turns back to Blaine immediately, asking, "What's this surprise you mentioned?" Blaine's grin grows and Kurt fidgets, and it takes several long seconds to slip into place.

"Kurt?" Patrick asks, and now he's looking at him much more carefully. Taking in the tailored pants, the styled hair, and the way Kurt is standing a little too close to Blaine. "_The_ Kurt? You two finally—"

And then he hugs Kurt tight.

* * *

Kurt likes Patrick, even though Patrick spent several long months fucking Blaine. It's strange, and Kurt never thought he'd be comfortable with any of Blaine's exes, but what is meant to be one quick drink at the pub turns into a late lunch. Patrick regales him with tales from Stanford and Kurt tells Patrick about New York and then Lima and Dalton. Eventually, Blaine explains their current transatlantic predicament and Patrick just laughs himself silly. But he takes it all in, and when they part ways he hugs both of them.

He pulls Blaine back though, letting Kurt walk a little further away, so he can whisper something in Blaine's ear. "I want an invite to the wedding." It makes Blaine blush, and when Kurt asks him, Blaine says it was nothing even though the color in Blaine's cheeks makes it plain it was something.

Kurt is a little surprised to find he doesn't mind so much.

* * *

That night, Kurt shows Blaine the new store, pushing his way through the throng of Oxford Street shoppers to get inside, and then snapping at the perky girl behind the counter who is neglecting the many shoppers on the floor. Blaine just stares at how much has obviously been achieved in so short a time. He stares at the rich-looking people and the tourists and the bright patterned skirts and dresses. There is a corner in the front dedicated to a selection of deep purple suits that he desperately wants to run his fingers over. He hugs Kurt tight and tells him he can't believe how incredible he is.

* * *

Blaine leaves the next day at the crack of dawn and Kurt goes with him all the way to Heathrow, just because he can. They kiss outside security and Kurt finds himself crying when Blaine disappears through the gates.

* * *

**A/N: **Yep, basically more fluffy. Oops. Rest assured there will be decidedly less fluffy things coming up! Or am I bluffing? Or am I serious? Gonna make you wait all of 18 hours to find out.


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N: **Third last chapter guys! Would've been the last chapter except I went and added way too much stuff. Oops! Thank for the reviews as always! I hope I'm not posting too fast for you to keep up!

* * *

**Chapter Fourteen**

They make it to late October. It's almost six months since Kurt left and almost four months since they last saw each other. Everything seems so perfectly fine that Kurt doesn't realize anything is wrong until, suddenly, he does. He berates himself late into the night over that fact and wonders whether there's something he should have done differently.

Blaine loses a case and can't get out of bed on Sunday early enough to pick Max up and go for a run.

He skips an email to Kurt because every time he goes to write it, his eyes flood with tears and his throat closes up. He drinks a bottle of wine and then opens another, collapses on the couch, and watches the worst porn he can find until he's come twice and is exhausted enough to sleep.

A few mornings later, there's an itch at the base of his spine he can't reach. That night, when he loses himself in more shitty porn and more cheap wine, there's a pop up ad that makes his fingers hover before he closes it.

_Meet Locals in Your Area. _

He sighs and calls Kurt straight away.

* * *

Kurt misses his morning meeting to talk to Blaine for three hours straight and he doesn't care in the slightest. Blaine hangs up feeling better and Kurt promises him, over and over, that they're getting there. He reminds him that Christmas is soon and then it's only a few more months. Kurt promises him that they can do this and that Kurt will do everything in his power to make sure that they do.

When he says that, there's no mistaking the promise of whatever Blaine needs and Blaine has to bite his lip to stop from begging Kurt to come home.

* * *

Rachel—of all people _Rachel_—turns up on Blaine's doorstep a half hour after he hangs up with Kurt. She has an arched eyebrow, a slightly ridiculous looking hat, and a billowing white coat. In her arms, she holds bags containing two different types of cake, ice cream, wine, and liqueurs. Around her feet, making every effort to tangle her up, is Max. Rachel Berry, Broadway's rising star, is standing outside Blaine's apartment, wind-swept, and over-loaded with food and a dog.

He hasn't seen her in something like a year and the only way she could possibly know where he lives is through Kurt, but none of that seems to matter. She sweeps into his little apartment, dumps the food on the counter in the kitchen, and then lets Max off his leash.

Blaine is getting sloppy dog kisses and laughing by the time Rachel crosses from his kitchen to where he's hugging Max tight on the sofa. She clears her throat, none too discretely, and then, when Blaine looks up, she smacks him on the arm hard enough to make him flinch and snaps, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Wha—"

"I thought we'd reconnected after that night at my apartment and then you went completely off grid and I only managed to beat it out of Kurt a month ago when he started signing off emails with stupid little kisses! He started enjoying _my_ stories about _my_ love life! I knew something was up!" She takes Max off him and Blaine pouts. "And then Kurt won't let me tell you I know because he doesn't know how official you are and then I get a call in the middle of the night demanding I come over here and make sure you're okay!"

She huffs and Blaine isn't quite sure what to expect. Certainly not for her to crawl into his lap and give him a long, hard hug, but she does exactly that.

"You two have the worst timing," she huffs into his chest and Blaine hugs her back and agrees.

* * *

He cries a lot that night. He isn't even really sure why. When Rachel asks him if it feels like ten years ago when he was alone in Ohio, he says it doesn't. When Rachel asks him if he's unhappy or jealous or worried Kurt might be on a different page, he says no every time. She gets worked up again because she felt left out, and Blaine tells her exactly the same story Kurt told her: a five day date and they don't really know what they're doing.

Sighing heavily, he pushes Max to the floor and moves to inspect the cakes. There's no cheesecake, which is probably for the best, but there's a dark, heavy chocolate cake and ice cream to go with it. After a moment's consideration, her hands on her stomach as though debating the potential downside, Rachel agrees to a small slice as well.

When Blaine slides into a chair at the dining table, Rachel just looks at him with her eyebrow arched again, shakes her head, and purses her lips.

"What?" Blaine asks.

Rachel hesitates for a moment, and then she says, "I know exactly what went down on that table, and who, and if you think I'm eating anything off it, ever, you are mistaken."

Blaine's laughing before he remembers he's miserable.

* * *

They're well and truly on their way to drunk and Rachel has already announced she is willing to share the bed with Blaine when they eventually pass out.

She takes a mouthful of wine and fixes Blaine with a hard stare. "You are sure, though, aren't you?" she asks, fingers scratching behind Max's ears as he sleeps curled up on Blaine's lap.

"Of course," Blaine replies.

Rachel waits a beat, lets it sink in, and then asks, "Of what?"

It makes him think, and then it makes him take a deep breath and remember all the things he hopes for. He stops feeling desperately lonely and ends up telling Rachel a hundred hopes and dreams for the future, only half of which he has dared to tell Kurt.

When he's almost asleep, curled around Max, his head in Rachel's lap, and the sun starting to rise, Rachel plays with his hair and tells him she's heard pretty much all those things from Kurt before.

* * *

A few days later, Blaine has remembered how to breathe again. Rachel has decided they have a standing date to do dinner every Thursday night from now on and when Blaine protests and says he often gets busy with work, she just shushes him and tells him she can wait up for him until four in the morning.

Kurt emails more than usual, but his words are carefully chosen. He calls Blaine at least once a day and they're never interrupted by anyone on Kurt's end.

Then Kurt Skypes him, and Blaine can't help but cry when he sees his face set against the familiar backdrop of the black wooden headboard of his bed and the grey walls and the painting of poppies. Tears track down Kurt's cheeks, as well, and he doesn't bother trying to to hide them. He grins though, and eventually Blaine grins back.

They talk about work and the weather and Rachel for a few minutes.

Then Kurt asks, "Tell me everything that went wrong?"

"It was nothing." Blaine can see he's ready to argue. "I mean it was nothing in particular. It's just hard, missing you so much and not being able to do anything about it."

"Is there anything we can do?" Kurt asks, genuinely wondering.

Blaine sighs. "I lost a case." He hasn't told Kurt all of this. He hasn't had a reason to. "And then I couldn't get out of bed in the mornings and I couldn't be bothered cooking or going for runs or anything. I just felt like… Kurt…"

Kurt shushes him to stop him from crying again and wishes he could hug him tight. He hates that this always seems harder on Blaine because he's sure it actually isn't. "Are you okay now?"

Blaine nods. "I'm better. I still miss you, but I think I'm better."

The conversation lulls a little and they talk about Rachel again. Blaine tells Kurt about the kitchen table and Kurt blushes red and apologizes for having ever told her anything.

"Oh, I like the scandal," Blaine responds. "I miss having you on my kitchen table."

Kurt scoffs and turns redder still.

"I watched really bad porn last week before…" He doesn't know what to call it. "That's where I saw the ad."

Kurt knows Blaine saw an internet ad to organise hook ups. He knows that's what made him call. Instead of being terrified, he's just unbelievably happy that Blaine did call him and he's told him so more than once.

"I think the bad porn was me trying to escape you… you're like really, really good porn, Kurt."

Kurt would probably be blushing less if Blaine didn't sound so goddamn earnest.

"I miss you," Blaine says, and this time it's obvious he means the sex because his breath is shallow and his eyes are dark.

That night isn't the first time they get off with each other over Skype, nor is it the last, but it's probably the best.

* * *

Two weeks after that, Kurt finds out he can't get home for Christmas. The chance for a holiday gets slimmer and slimmer until he has a handful of days and it makes more sense to stay. He calls Blaine just after Thanksgiving to tell him and he can hear Blaine crying even though Blaine tries so hard to hide it.

"I need you," Blaine eventually admits. "I'm not even sure I need you more than you need me. Maybe differently. Maybe I just feel it creeping up on us. But I need you."

Kurt starts crying then, telling Blaine, as he comes to realize it, that fifteen hour days at work are entirely because he has nothing to come home to. He tells Blaine that he needs him, too, and that he doesn't know what they're doing, not at all.

Kurt says he can't lose Blaine again.

Blaine says, "I'll come to London."

Kurt shakes his head and rakes a hand through his hair. "Don't, that would be so expensive for you and such a waste. There's no one here but me and you'll miss your family—"

"I don't need them. I barely even like them. I need you," Blaine presses. "I need to feel you again, just… I need to touch you and know you're still there."

Kurt sniffles and takes a deep breath, unbelievably thankful that Blaine would dare to say it. "We'll work something out. By New Years, okay?"

There's another sniffle and then a "Yeah."

Kurt spends the next two hours talking to Blaine in a low voice, exhausted, but forcing himself to stay awake with Blaine, talking touch and scent and taste, all the things they need but can't have, until Blaine is groaning down the line and they both get off and feel better about things.

* * *

Kurt tells Julius Matilda Warner to suck his dick. JMW, as they call him, is very much in charge of New Gen Vivienne Westwood, even though nobody is quite sure why. Kurt stands in his over-sized, somewhat ridiculous office and says that if he won't let him go back to the states for the week over Christmas, then JMW can suck his dick. This is, of course, after exhausting all the reasonable, grown up negotiation techniques at his disposal.

Kurt feels sick to his stomach as he storms out, but he doesn't regret it for a moment. It is ridiculous that they need him to keep sketching, keep tweaking. The line looks good, the materials are chosen, and the clothes are being sewn. Julius is just a giant, talentless moron.

When he gets back to his apartment, Kurt books his flights back to Lima and then he calls Blaine. When the call from JMW comes through, Kurt puts a babbling, happy Blaine on hold and answers with a snapped, "What?"

It isn't Julius, it's his secretary, and Kurt immediately feels bad for snapping. Then he feels a whole lot better because Julius's secretary is calling to apologize on her boss's behalf and wish Kurt a Merry Christmas and a happy holiday.

He needs to be back by the 28th and work all the way through New Years. He couldn't give a flying fuck.

Blaine needs him and he is going to Blaine. Because he can.


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter Fifteen**

Blaine picks him up from the airport and hugs him so tight Kurt almost chokes. He mutters, "Thank you," over and over into Kurt's neck and is crying when Kurt steps back. So Kurt pulls him into another hug and then kisses him hard, taking him by the shoulders.

"This is for me, as well, okay?" Kurt tells him.

Blaine nods, wiping his cheeks. "We're gonna be fine," Blaine says, and he believes it.

"It's Christmas," Kurt replies. "We are going to be better than fine."

* * *

Kurt calls his dad from the rental car and spends ten minutes assuring him he is happy to be home and not too exhausted. He promises Burt that he will be home as soon as Blaine drops him off, then he clicks the phone closed and notices that Blaine keeps looking across at him.

"What?" he asks, smiling.

"Nothing," Blaine mumbles. Blaine fiddles with his iPod at the traffic lights and Kurt raises an eyebrow.

Then, "Baby It's Cold Outside" is playing and Kurt is giggling while Blaine grabs at his hand and pleads, "Sing with me."

They do. Kurt's voice sounds even better without the crackle of Skype or the muffling of the shower. Then they move on to 'Let It Snow' and then whichever Christmas tune Blaine's iPod feels like.

Kurt is so caught up in singing that he doesn't notice Blaine turning off the highway, still miles from home, until Blaine is pulling into the drive of the swanky new Hilton hotel.

"Blaine?" Kurt asks, staring out his window. "Where are we going?"

"I'm being spontaneous!" Blaine says back and he sounds so damn happy that Kurt doesn't say another word.

They park in the guest parking lot and when Kurt stands there with his hands on his hips, unable to stop grinning but still utterly confused, Blaine simply pulls his luggage from the trunk and grins, waggling his eyebrows.

"Blaine, seriously," Kurt says as they walk past the bellhops and into the opulent foyer. "What are we doing?"

Blaine just waves him off. "Spontaneous," he says again, like that forgives all sins and with the way Blaine is smiling, Kurt can't really begin to be annoyed.

He approaches the main reception desk and walks right up to a harried looking girl with tied back blonde hair and a frown on her lips. "Hi," Blaine chirps.

"Hi," she responds, distracted by her computer. When she looks up she tries again. "Good afternoon sir."

"How are you?" Blaine says, leaning against the counter and smiling his most charming of smiles.

She softens, ever so slightly, her brow unknitting as she gives him her full attention. "I'm well sir. Merry Christmas—"

"Merry Christmas!" Blaine says it too loudly and his excitement is infectious. There is nothing of the lonely, unhappy man Kurt gets emails from every now and then.

The woman has to curb her grin now. "Have you got a reservation, sir?"

Blaine serves up another winning smile. "Nope."

"No?"

"Nope. What's available?"

"Two days before Christmas?" She looks down at her computer screen dubiously, the hustle and bustle of a newly opened, highly acclaimed hotel—at Christmas—whipping around them. Sighing, she says, "Let me check if there are any cancellations," and starts typing away.

When she looks up, she looks genuinely disappointed. "I'm sorry, sir. There aren't any rooms available."

Kurt pulls a face that plainly says: 'I told you so,' and Blaine's face falls.

"None?" Blaine asks as Kurt huffs beside him and hoists one of his bags higher on his shoulder.

She considers them, her head tilting just a little. "Not unless you want a junior honeymoon suite."

Blaine's eyes light up, his fallen smile recovering quickly as he looks from Kurt to her and then back to Kurt.

Kurt just leans forward, catches Blaine's eye, and tries very hard to communicate that he thinks Blaine has lost his mind.

"Perfect!" Blaine announces, knowing full well he is about to blow his entire year's savings and probably more. Actually, he might have to go and get a job with his father to work this off. He finds that he doesn't particularly care.

"Just one night?" the girl asks.

"Three," Blaine says, and Kurt grabs him by the forearm, continuing to look at him like he has lost it.

"Blaine…" Kurt warns.

"This is perfect," Blaine says, turning to him. "We can stay here and drive to your house for all the important meals and then come back. It's a holiday," he stresses.

Behind the counter, the girl cocks her head and coughs to regain Blaine's attention. "For you and your…' she lets he voice trail off.

They're back in Lima and Kurt's eyes go wide, his head snapping around and his classic bitchface in place, because he isn't used to this anymore. Not in New York, and not in London, and not really anywhere civilized. He remembers Lima all too well.

"Husband?" she tries, with the barest of smiles breaking through, and Kurt's face softens while Blaine laughs beside him.

"Fiancé?" she tries again.

"Very cheeky," Blaine tells her, waggling a finger, but still grinning oh so obviously. She shrugs and Kurt winks when Blaine isn't looking.

"Boyfriend," Kurt eventually provides.

"Love of my life," Blaine corrects.

* * *

Their heads are bent together, and they're grinning and speaking in whispers, as they cross the foyer with Kurt's luggage dragged behind them and Blaine's hand clasped tight around the key to their room.

Neither one of them notices the woman striding purposefully across the foyer floor and cutting in front of an elderly couple with a smile. She slips behind the reception desk and leans over the girl—Rebecca's—shoulder.

"Was that Kurt Hummel?" she asks.

Rebecca looks lost for a moment. "The couple that just checked in?" she asks.

The hotel concierge nods, gold-painted fingernail tapping the desk impatiently as Rebecca types.

"Blaine Anderson," Rebecca says, still confused as she pulls up the credit card details.

"I knew it!"

* * *

The cost of the room is obscene, but Blaine says it's worth it and reminds Kurt of his raise and his very secure job and the fact that they will have a room to themselves for a few days. Kurt stares at him and doesn't mention exactly how much he'll be making once he's back in New York, because it doesn't seem the time and he knows that very soon, Blaine's shitty salary will be fairly well offset by his own exorbitant one.

Instead, Kurt tells him he's crazy in the elevator up to the top floor and Blaine just grins at him. Then they are kissing and touching and falling against each other, mumbling, "God I miss you," and "I love you," and "Thank you," over and over and over until the elevator dings, and they clamber out and quickly find their room.

The junior honeymoon suite is as obscene as its price, but they don't notice right away. The hopeless kissing from the elevator ride up dissolves into pure, simple lust as soon as the door clicks closed behind them.

Blaine has Kurt up against the wall, both of them hard in their pants in moments as Kurt is panting and moaning against Blaine's ear as Blaine bites marks into his collarbone and pulls at his clothes.

There's an endless litany of "Oh god, oh god, oh god," from Kurt's mouth until Blaine kisses him, open and hot and owning, and then pulls back.

"Fuck," he swears as his hips grind forward of their own volition. "Kurt," he says and Kurt moans. "Kurt, tell me you want me as much as I want you right now."

"Yes," Kurt snakes his hands down, grabbing and pulling and wanting so much of everything, but mostly just wanting Blaine. Right now. "_Yes." _

* * *

They get off against the door, just like that, in their pants, and ten minutes later, Blaine laments his lack of clean underwear. Kurt promises to let him borrow some of his and then strips him naked and pushes him onto the bed. They lay together for as long as they can, not speaking a word, but kissing and touching and grinning at each other.

When Kurt's phone rings and it's his dad, he answers quickly, batting Blaine away as the blush crawls up his cheeks.

Blaine only hears one side of the conversation, his hand eventually settling to rub up and down one of Kurt's calves, watching the hair smooth down and then mess up over and over.

When Kurt hangs up, they talk schedules. It's the 23rd and Burt wants Kurt home for brunch and Christmas tree decorating tomorrow. Kurt has negotiated Christmas Eve free since Burt knows too well he'll likely be asleep by eight. Christmas day will be lunch and too much food, and if they want to drink they'll need to organise a ride. The days after, Burt doesn't mind so much, but he grumbles enough that Kurt decides that once they've checked out, they'll go by the shop.

"What about your family?" Kurt asks.

"I'll see them for New Years," is all Blaine says, and then he frowns. "Don't let my crazy kidnapping plan keep you from yours." He trails off, remembering how desperate he had been an hour ago against the door. "I just really needed you alone," he admits.

"My dad understands," Kurt says, blushing when he realizes exactly how much his father probably understands. "And anyway, we won't have the hotel after the 26th, so I'll have three full days stuck within the confines of my house. My dad will deal with it."

Blaine is still looking at him sheepishly. "Maybe I should have dragged you here after Christmas, for those three days."

Laughing, Kurt kisses him and says, "Nonsense." His dad isn't super impressed, but Kurt has made sure Burt understands that Blaine is it now. Blaine is everything.

"Now, tell me you brought lube."

Blaine's face falls so fast that Kurt laughs hard enough to almost fall off the side of the bed. He fishes in his own luggage and pulls out a bottle and a packet of condoms. "Relax!" he teases, and then watches as Blaine pouts at him before turning over onto his belly, looking back over his shoulder with a challenging smile.

* * *

They don't use the condoms. There's a quick, breathless conversation and then hard, desperate kissing and the box falls to the floor. They get sticky and messy and kiss it off each other, sweat and saliva and come. They completely mess up the sheets. It's wonderful, and perfect, and just as they're falling asleep, Kurt tells Blaine he thinks he'll be back in New York by Easter.

* * *

Burt looks determinedly displeased when they turn up at 10am the next morning for brunch. Blaine babbles and apologizes and doesn't quite know how to explain to Kurt's _dad_ that he really, really, really needed some alone time with Kurt.

Burt waves him off and puts an arm around Kurt's shoulder and tries very hard to be cross.

Except then Carole tucks herself into Burt's side and starts making small remarks that seem oh so innocent.

"Look at the way they look at each other."

"Oh my god, they coordinated outfits!"

"Wait, is Blaine wearing Kurt's clothes?"

"Look at him trying to get Blaine to walk under the mistletoe. I told you we should have hung more."

By the time Finn and his wife turn up, Burt is grinning and talking to Blaine about football and New York, and when he realizes how relaxed he is, Burt turns to glare at his wife.

* * *

They go via Blaine's parents' house that night, say a formal hello, and then Blaine grabs his bags and leaves.

That night, Kurt and Blaine slip back to the hotel and drink too much vodka because it tastes so good on each other's lips. It starts as a game, and ends as a game, but in between they learn some things about each other.

Kurt wants Blaine to expand his outrageous collection of boxer briefs into lace and bows and satin. Maybe knee-high socks. Or stockings. With garters. A corset?

Blaine swallows and says that yes, definitely, he can try that.

Blaine wants Kurt to tie him up, and when he can't quite explain that it isn't just handcuffs, they end up huddled over Kurt's laptop, scrolling through websites. Kurt says he can try that, too.

Then they fall back into bed and Blaine begs Kurt to let him fuck his mouth.

* * *

The next morning, they're woken up by a woman knocking on their door and calling, "Room Service". While they scramble for clothes, they also freak out because it's Christmas Day and they seem to have overslept. Much to his relief, when Blaine checks his phone, it's only just gone six am.

He's about to tell Kurt that whoever the fuck is outside their door is most certainly not room service when Kurt, who has managed to throw on a robe, opens the door and swears. "Holy shit."

Santana bursts into the room and then wrinkles her nose because the bed is a disaster and Blaine is still only in boxer shorts. Reindeer printed boxer shorts. "Gross," Santana mutters, screwing up her nose, and then says, "I thought you two broke up."

Kurt takes an extra second to answer because he hasn't seen Santana in years and here she is, standing between him and Blaine in an immaculate white suit with her hair pulled back into classy waves. He is blinking rapidly trying to put everything together. "We did. We got back together."

"Good," she says. "When?"

"About eight months ago. I don't under—"

"I'm the concierge," she announces, hand on her hip and eyes flashing, as if awaiting a challenge. "It's my hotel."

"If this is about the sheets—" Blaine begins.

She wrinkles her nose again. "Ew," she says and then tosses her hair. "I saw you check in," she tells them, "And I talked to Rebecca, the girl in reception, and she filled me in."

Kurt rolls his eyes, wishing he had put something more substantial on. He tugs the fluffy material down where the hem is resting barely mid-thigh. "I hardly think Rebecca in reception knows enough to fill you in on anything."

Santana rolls her eyes. "She said you were disgustingly in love and seemed reasonably desperate for a room." She pauses. "Was she wrong?"

"We got back together and five days later Kurt moved to London for a year." Blaine blurts it out and snatches a pillow up to cover his crotch in the process.

Santana cackles. "You're trying long distance? Again?"

"We're doing very well, thank you very much," Blaine says.

"Oh, I know." Santana casts her sharp eyes over the bed and the towels still piled where they'd been dropped just outside the bathroom. Finally, she runs a finger down the side of one of the empty bottles from the night before. "I'm here to help," she soothes.

* * *

It's worth the humiliation of being caught with his pants down, Blaine concedes. Santana, for whatever unfathomable reason, seems to be pro-them and seems to have the entire hotel staff under her thumb. Unsurprising, really.

The honeymoon suite is suddenly as cheap as it would be in the lowest season of the year and, low and behold, they have it during the 'stay one night, get a second free' promotion. Which, Blaine says excitedly, bouncing on the bed, gives them three more nights.

Kurt grins at him and continues to stare at the door Santana just left through, his fingers smoothing over the hotel vouchers she's stuffed into his hand. He doesn't quite understand why, but he is definitely not going to question it.

* * *

Blaine lets the three extra days of honeymoon suite slip at lunch, as well as the fact that it's a honeymoon suite. Finn's wife had insisted she pick them up from the hotel and drop them off so they could drink, since she couldn't. An hour alone with Burt got Blaine drunk, and an hour trying to help Carole cook without Blaine either on the phone or Skype explaining all the recipes meant Kurt was similarly inebriated.

Blaine's buzzing and leaning into the heat of Kurt next to him, and Kurt's letting his fingers graze Blaine's wrist every chance he gets. When Burt asks what they want to do with the three days before Kurt has to go back to London, Blaine just babbles, as he is wont to do.

"We've got the hotel room until he flies out! It was a…" he searches for the word and takes another mouthful of wine. "It was fate! So we have the suite for three more days, but we'll come and visit you in the shop! Are you back at the shop?"

Burt tries to answer but Blaine keeps speaking.

"I mean a honeymoon suite at the Hilton is amazing and all but it's getting a little bit boring after three days and there's only so much—oh." He seems to remember himself, and then he realizes that no one is eating and everyone is staring at him. He quickly tries to work out why. He didn't specifically say that three days of sex had left them both a bit too sore to continue for three more.

"Did you guys—" Finn cuts himself off, eyes wide and blinking as his wife stares hard at her food.

"Did we what?" Kurt asks. It's a small comfort to Blaine to hear Kurt just as confused as himself.

Carole looks from Burt, who is turning just slightly red, to Kurt and Blaine across from her, waiting for the penny to drop and then supplying a little help. "The honeymoon suite?"

"Oh… oh." Kurt gasps, and Blaine laughs beside him. "Oh my god, you thought—" Kurt looks outraged. "We did not elope, oh my god, _dad!" _

Burt is backing off pretty fast and Blaine is still laughing and then hiccupping, then shaking that off and breathing deep to listen.

"As if I'm going to get married anywhere other than New York, with you walking me down the aisle and… and a string quartet and, oh I don't know, doves and a massive wedding cake and a big party! As if I could elope." Kurt starts to smile then and Burt has raised his hands in defeat. Carole is sporting her own small, secret smile and not saying a word.

"He said honeymoon suite," Burt says, nodding towards Blaine who is looking at Kurt with wide, solemn eyes that make Kurt's brow crease for a moment.

"It was the only room available," Kurt says, nose in the air. "And as Blaine said, rather than be a burden on you and Carole, we are staying there the next three nights."

"Okay," Burt doesn't argue further, quite happy to be kept in the dark about some things. "Okay." Under the table, Carole squeezes his hand so hard it hurts.

* * *

They spend less time in the hotel room as expected. Santana comments on it when she intercepts them in the foyer, and they apologize but say family duty calls. Blaine still looks love drunk beside Kurt and Kurt is smiling so Santana just shrugs and says, "Whatever."

They visit the Lima Mall and catch up with some of the Warblers. They spend a day in the shop with Kurt's dad, business slow and the weather bitingly cold. Kurt slips out for lunch with Finn and returns to the hotel to find Blaine naked in the bathtub smelling like vanilla, and then there's ice cream and he tastes of it, too.

The day Kurt leaves, he makes Blaine promise not to wake up. Blaine frowns and says he'll try, knowing he won't be able to stop himself.

"I don't want to have to say goodbye to you ever again," Kurt says, and he has said it so many times. This time it seems more serious, though. "So I won't. Easter okay?"

In the morning, Blaine keeps his eyes closed and his head buried in a pillow that smells like Kurt until he hears the door to their hotel room click quietly closed. He doesn't cry that morning, just takes long, deep breaths and hopes. Then he heads over to Burt's shop to spend a few hours there before driving to his parent's house for a few days.

* * *

When Kurt finally gets back to London, more exhausted and far, far happier than when he left, there are already two emails from Blaine. He doesn't open either first. Instead, he drags the cursor to open something far more unexpected: an email from Santana.

_It would want to be an amazing, expensive wedding. And I would want to get a plus one. ~Santana. _

* * *

**A/N: **One more chapter! Oh my goodness how did that happen!? There is a little epilogue after that but then we're done! Unless I write the lingerie fic. Of the tying Blaine up fic. Or the time Kurt told Burt via skype that Blaine was back on the scene... But only one more chapter left of this one! Thanks for coming on the ride with me! Thank you a million times over for all your delightful reviews, I treasure them! 18 hours for Chapter 16.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter Sixteen**

Kurt really does get snowed under with work after that. A week off hasn't set him back, but suddenly they're headed for Milan with a fashion show they need to nail and it's in a matter of weeks. He calls Blaine from the bus on the way to work and in the evenings while he's eating. More than a dozen times, Kurt falls asleep mid-conversation, and Blaine says he understands and refuses to accept apologies.

Blaine asks him when things will calm down and when Kurt says March, Blaine says he'll visit him then.

It's the most wonderful feeling for Kurt to be able to say back: "You don't have to. I'll be home in April."

* * *

Blaine goes to London anyway. He has vacation time and nothing to do with it, and he tells Kurt he doesn't mind if Kurt has to work, that just falling asleep with him will be the perfect vacation.

Kurt meets him just like the last time, at Kings Cross, and once again they catch two buses to get home. It's a Sunday and they spend it in bed.

Then it is a whole week of disgusting levels of domesticity. On Monday, Kurt wakes up early and kisses Blaine on the cheek. He's given himself the half hour he needs to be pulled back into the bed by a sleep-tousled boyfriend, who is intent on kissing him with morning breath and clumsy hands. Kurt enjoys every second of it. After twenty minutes though, after Blaine starts arching up and rutting against his hip, Kurt forces himself away.

"I really do need to go," he says and Blaine pouts and stretches, gloriously naked on top of Kurt's sheets, while Kurt tries to right his hair and shirt collar. On the bed, spread-eagled and writhing, Blaine moans too-loud as he starts jerking off. Kurt looks at him for only a second, seeing the tease in Blaine's eyes and growling a little as he forces himself to turn away. He shrugs on his jacket and yells a cheery, "I really hate you," over his shoulder as he races out the door.

Ten minutes later, hot and bothered and wedged in beside a woman who smells far too heavily of lavender, Kurt's phone vibrates and he judges himself a little bit for having to read it right away.

**Blaine to Kurt**

_You missed a very, very good morning. _

Kurt groans and the woman next to him gives him a very displeased look.

* * *

Blaine keeps Kurt informed of his movements the entire day. There are texts coming in every half hour, and even if Kurt hasn't quite got the time to answer them adequately, he likes reading them as all of his employees mill around him like ants.

He tells Kurt about his walk along the Thames and then through St James's Park. Blaine gets lost and ended up at Trafalgar Square. It's raining. Of course it's raining, it's London.

Blaine meets up with Patrick for a late lunch and messages Kurt a quick hello from the both of them. Then he coerces Patrick into taking the afternoon off and showing him around the lawyer parts of London in exchange for gossip about his budding romance with Kurt.

* * *

Monday night, just like every night—Blaine knows that because of emails and Skype, and he's seeing Kurt every night—Kurt comes home tightly wound, still immaculately put together, and babbling about work. He kisses Blaine in the kitchen and goes to get changed. Blaine trots after him immediately, intent on helping Kurt out of his clothes. It results in some severely burnt pork and Blaine makes a mental note to factor fooling around time into his future cooking plans.

* * *

The week progresses in much of the same manner. Kurt works his usual long hours because he has no other option, and Blaine enjoys playing house. It is, he tells Kurt, a thousand times more relaxing than work, and that's what vacations are for.

They drink too much wine too often and talk until it's dark and quiet on Kurt's street. They have sex at every opportunity and by Wednesday, it has turned into a given that when the dishes are done they turn on each other and seduce and laugh and try to make the other gasp.

On Thursday, that changes. Kurt calls and wants dinner early and tells Blaine they're going out. When Kurt gets home, he's smiling and rocking up onto the balls of his feet while he hovers around Blaine in the kitchen and watches him work.

"Not changing?" Blaine asks.

"After dinner," Kurt says.

Blaine hums something, stirring a pot and then letting his eyes slide to Kurt. He looks remarkable like this, almost glowing with what is obviously a secret, along with excitement and energy. Blaine can't really be blamed for his inability to resist. He has Kurt up against the fridge in two seconds flat and his hands on Kurt's waist as his kisses him and sets to untucking his shirt.

Giggling and swatting at him, Kurt lets him kiss as much and as hard as he likes, giggling harder when Blaine's mouth matches his own teasing, fleeting presses, and gives in to Kurt's hands pulling his away from his crotch. With their fingers intertwined at their sides and their mouths smiling more than they're kissing, Blaine asks, "What is it we're doing tonight?"

"Hurry up and make my dinner," Kurt replies.

* * *

Kurt has a suit for him. It's a Three-piece in a subdued, dark grey. The cut is traditional, if incredibly fitted, but for the narrow collar embroidered with fine silver thread and the purple pinstripes. It fits Blaine almost perfectly and it takes Kurt less than ten minutes to hem the cuffs. The shirt beneath is silk and the socks are the softest Blaine's ever encountered. Kurt leads him into the bathroom and styles his hair for him, scrunching the curls in his hands, tugging on them to make sure they'll hold their shape.

"You should wear your glasses," Kurt tells him, hooking his chin over Blaine's shoulder and meeting his eyes in the mirror.

"Is it weird that your clothes turn me on?" Blaine whispers back. "As well as making me immensely proud and in awe and a little jealous, obviously," he adds.

Kurt laughs and moves away into the bedroom to pull his own suit from its bag and start undressing. "I never said it was one of mine," he says.

Staring at him for too long, watching the pull of pale skin over muscles and bones he's entirely familiar with by now, Blaine eventually says, "You sent me the sketches for it last year."

* * *

It's a gallery opening, Kurt reveals in the cab. It's not anything special, but he thinks there will be some important people there and, more than that, he thinks Blaine will enjoy it.

"Why are you so excited?" Blaine asks as the lights of London flash past them. "I mean, I am too, but why is this—"

Kurt cuts him off. "Because when we're back in New York I'm going to want to take you out to these things all the time, but for now this is kind of the first time we've ever…"

"Oh." It's strange to think, but he's right. This is a work event and Blaine is going as Kurt's date.

When they arrive, there is a door-list and paparazzi and the usual crowd of onlookers pulled in by anything bright and shining. Kurt slips through the door with Blaine on his arm, mostly unnoticed, and then fetches them both champagne.

"Whose work are we looking at exactly?" Blaine mumbles, close to Kurt's ear as they wander the wide-open white space with the splashes of art set against the walls.

Kurt shrugs and tells him that it doesn't matter, and then Blaine is being led across the floor to meet the people Kurt works with. After that, Britain's latest starlet, stunning with big red hair and sparkling blue eyes, ends up between them, arms linked with both, gossiping and telling Kurt she loves everything he does and then being dragged away by someone else.

So the night goes, with Kurt meeting people he knows and people he doesn't, hearing people gush about his work and being given quite the cold appraisal a couple of times. He wears Blaine on his arm the whole night, keeping him close and always with a drink in his hand. More than once, he drags him off to look at one of the paintings in the corner just so he can whisper in his ear about nothing important at all, and laugh.

Blaine giggles into his neck during the cab ride home. He makes jokes about retiring to be Kurt's happy househusband and a fine specimen of arm candy and Kurt giggles with him. Until they're alone, and then Kurt finds strawberries in the fridge and spends an hour and a half telling Blaine how amazing he is and feeding him. Kurt tells him how proud he is of Blaine and all the things he does at the DA's office. Blaine nods along and they fall asleep on the couch.

* * *

On Friday they argue. It's completely trivial, and when they think about it later, it simply boils down to it being a Friday for Kurt. It's the end of the week, where he would usually have been getting five or six hours sleep a night, but with Blaine there, he has been lucky to get four. For Blaine, it's Friday and he goes home on Monday and he really, really doesn't want to.

Blaine cooks, as usual. He searches London all morning for the closest thing to New York cheesecake he can find and fresh raspberries. He meets Patrick again and lets himself get excited about cooking duck for dinner and surprising Kurt one more time. They go to Chinatown together on Patrick's lunch hour and shop, and then it's a quick kiss on the cheek and Patrick is outrageous enough to slap Blaine on the ass and say, "Go get 'em tiger," as Blaine runs to catch his bus.

He checks twice with Kurt to make sure he'll be home by 7:30 before he starts cooking. He waits until 7:45 before he sends a text and pulls the duck from the oven. He waits until 8 before he starts to worry, staring at his phone and slicing the duck up for the fridge so it can be reheated… whenever.

He gets a text from Kurt at 8.30.

**Kurt to Blaine**

_Stuck on a dress. Home soon._

It makes Blaine bristle, and all of the worry shifts easily to anger as he shoves the duck in the fridge, knowing full well it'll make the cheesecake smell, and then sits and waits.

Kurt breezes in just before nine. More bags than he usually carries clutched in both hands and then dumped on the floor just inside the door. He calls to Blaine and Blaine doesn't answer.

When Kurt calls to Blaine again, and this time his voice comes from the bedroom, Blaine grits his teeth and propels himself off the sofa. He finds Kurt beside the bed, hanging his vest up and humming. When he catches Blaine's furrowed brow and the scowl across his mouth, Kurt's expression shifts to confused.

Before he has even had a chance to ask, Blaine is saying, "You should have called."

"What?"

"When you knew you were going to be late," Blaine says, arms crossed, leaning against the doorframe and watching Kurt undress. "You should have called me. Or sent a text."

"Oh, you know I never have any idea when I'm going to get off work," Kurt says, waving it away and stripped down to his underwear and socks.

"I cooked," Blaine grits out.

Kurt knows something is wrong but how is he to know what? "You've cooked every night," he says. Which is true, and what he means is Blaine has never minded Kurt's schedule before.

"You said 7:30 and then you don't answer my calls—"

"Blaine, I'm sorry," Kurt has stopped what he's doing and is watching Blaine carefully. "I didn't realize…" Except he isn't sure what.

Blaine shrugs, still mad, and mutters, "Whatever." Then he disappears and Kurt sighs, trying to figure out exactly what has happened as he pulls on a pair of jeans.

The front door to his apartment closing makes him freeze. "Blaine?" he calls, but everything sounds quiet.

By the time he's pulled on a shirt and is down on the street, there's no sign of Blaine. Kurt is barefoot and it's cold so he goes back upstairs, typing quickly into his phone.

**Kurt to Blaine**

_Come home. I'm sorry. _

He doesn't really understand the argument until a few minutes later, when he wanders into the kitchen, hand tangled in his hair as he fights off a tight throat and fast breaths. He can smell the duck then and sees the dozens of fresh ingredients left across the counter. When he opens the fridge, the full aroma hits him, and he remembers that smell astoundingly well from that first night almost a year ago.

He finds the cheesecake and thinks to put it in an airtight bag.

Perhaps he does understand.

* * *

Blaine walks for a half an hour even though after five minutes he feels a bit stupid. He responds to Kurt's text, asking for a little while, and then walks and walks until he's back outside Kurt's building.

He knows the code to get in and has the key to Kurt's door, so it's easy to slip in unannounced. Kurt's sitting at the kitchen counter with a slice of cheesecake in front of him and a bowl of raspberries. He hasn't touched the cheesecake, but his lips are stained red.

He starts when he sees Blaine, begins to move and then stops.

"Are you angry at me?" Blaine asks.

That makes Kurt pause. "No, I thought you were angry at me."

Blaine laughs. "Yeah." He's blushing and raking a hand through his hair. "Then I remembered I've only got you for another two days and I figured being angry at you was pretty dumb."

Kurt's face softens immediately and he slides off his stool and across to Blaine. "I'm sorry I didn't call," he says, hands laying flat across Blaine's cheeks. "I'm so used to living on my own, it just didn't occur to me."

Blaine nods, face nuzzling into Kurt's palm and kissing there. "I'm sorry I stormed out."

"We're even then," Kurt offers and Blaine nods.

They kiss, standing there, in the middle of Kurt's apartment. Mouths pressing and sliding, wet, warm pressure as their hands trace slow up and down each other's bodies, tugging at hair and pulling at hips. Kurt steps back only to duck back forward and kiss again and again, teasing with his mouth and his breath, his fingers tickling at the nape of Blaine's neck.

He waits until Blaine's smiling, and then brushes his fingertips feather-light up Blaine's sides and makes him laugh outright.

"I hear duck is pretty good in the microwave," Kurt says. "And then you can try to teach me how to make raspberry sauce."

Blaine's eyes are deep and soulful, but after a few blinks he smiles and accepts the fight for what it was. "Yeah," he mumbles, and ten minutes later it's forgotten.

* * *

The next day is Saturday and Kurt has resolutely decided it is a no-work weekend. They make it out of bed before noon and the sun is out with just enough early-Spring warmth to make it pleasant. Holding hands, Blaine takes Kurt on his favourite walks from earlier in the week, wandering the banks of the Thames once more and showing him his favourite seats in the park. They meet Patrick for drinks and then two of the young designers Kurt works with for coffee.

In the evening, they see a show that proves too forgettable, but they enjoy holding hands and knocking knees throughout the performance, anyway.

On Sunday, they do all of it again. They sleep in, go for a long jog together, and then take a shower together. They have lunch somewhere expensive and catch a matinee, and then go out for dinner even though they're not that hungry. They get home as early as they dare and eat left over cheesecake. Blaine laments the state of his belly even though Kurt assures him it is as trim and tight as ever.

They fall into bed before ten and try to pace themselves, taking it slow, begging each other to wait and hold on and be patient. They kiss to cool off and rut against each other when they forget that's just as bad as anything.

Kurt rolls off Blaine to the side and laughs giddily at the ceiling before taking a deep breath and covering him again. They kiss and kiss and kiss until they're drowning in it, and Blaine's laughing and saying, "It's only six weeks," and making Kurt laugh.

"How close are you?" Kurt asks.

"Not at all," Blaine mumbles, the lie so obvious when Kurt wraps his fingers around Blaine's cock and strokes. Blaine cries out and begs Kurt to stop.

"Wanna switch?" Kurt asks, eyes bright as he raises himself up, straddles Blaine's stomach, and pinches at one of his nipples.

Blaine has to swallow twice to answer. "Like the first time?"

Kurt nods.

"I… I don't know if I'll last that long," Blaine tells him.

"I'll make you," Kurt promises and then slips down his body. "Just tell me when you're close."

Kurt licks him most of the way open and that alone is dangerous, fingers and his tongue and Blaine pulling his own legs wide and babbling, arching into the sheets as he tells Kurt it's too much. Kurt rises up on his knees over Blaine and fingers himself open then, making Blaine watch, rocking out of reach every time Blaine begs to be allowed to help.

"Won't last," Kurt mutters, eyelids fluttering.

When Kurt sinks down over Blaine's cock, taking him in agonizing inch by agonizing inch, it all feels so familiar. Kurt closes his eyes and rocks and Blaine's hips snap up immediately.

"You shouldn't have teased me," Blaine tells him, meaning how close he is now. Then he gathers Kurt up in his arms and rolls them, sliding deeper into Kurt's ass and then raising up to fuck into him properly.

The breathy whimpers and the angle of Kurt's neck are enough to make Blaine's balls tighten and his stomach twist hotly. His whole body is sweating and shivering, fucking into tight and hot and his, lips working marks on Kurt's chest as he mumbles and moans. "God you're perfect. Thank you for being mine. I'm gonna come. Fuck Kurt,_ please_, Kurt, _fuck._" He spills deep, calling Kurt's name, over and over and fucking into him hard before he's too over-sensitive to be able to.

"Fuck, I love you," he says against the sweaty skin of Kurt's chest, and then Kurt clenches around him and spills between them with a moan.

Blaine laughs at him once they can breathe and move again. "I thought we were gonna switch?" he teases.

Kurt's exhausted though, spent and happily humming. He makes a half-thought out remark about waking Blaine up early, and then he snuggles into the gross sticky mess they're in and almost immediately falls asleep. Blaine watches him for a few short minutes and then joins him.

* * *

Contrary to Kurt's promise, Blaine wakes Kurt up. He has his arms wrapped around Kurt's waist from behind and his mouth at Kurt's ear.

"I can't wait to wake up like this every day," he says, loudly enough to draw Kurt up from sleep and make him mumble happily. He arches against Blaine a second later as Blaine's hand strokes rough up Kurt's cock, already hard and so turned on.

Kurt murmurs, "Jesus," and then arches again.

"You promised you'd fuck me as a goodbye," Blaine tells him.

"Never goodbye," Kurt says back, twisting in Blaine's arms and kissing him hard.

Blaine's already stretched open and wet with lube. It takes Kurt scant seconds to find the coordination to slick his own cock and twist to spoon Blaine from behind.

He slips inside easily and they both groan. They take it as slow as they can, little movements, tiny sparks of friction as Kurt kisses the muscles of Blaine's back and neck and then Blaine's mouth when he looks back and asks for it.

Eventually Blaine mumbles, "Please," and that's all it takes for Kurt to fuck into him properly, a half dozen strokes, his hand on Blaine's cock matching the movement, and both of them coming within seconds of each other.

They lay on the messed up sheets and Kurt's phone starts to ring.

It's a normal workday for him and Blaine is meant to be in the office by just after lunch. Thank goodness for the transatlantic time difference. Blaine showers first, quickly cleaning himself up and then getting dressed while Kurt does the same.

Blaine hovers in the doorway to Kurt's apartment, not sure what to say when there are still so many things and yet, none of them seem important.

It's Kurt who finally speaks. "I'll be home soon."

Blaine swallows and doesn't feel like crying because Kurt will be home and it will be soon. "I love you. I guess I've… I will always love you."

"Yeah," Kurt says, unable to stop himself from letting his fingers trace a few of the lines on Blaine's face. Then he smiles. "I guess in the scheme of forever, eleven years isn't really that long of a wait."

Blaine laughs and kisses the pad of Kurt's thumb before his hand falls away. "And six more weeks really just seems like nothing," Blaine admits.

"Less," Kurt says. They stare at each other for a long moment. "I'll be home soon and then we can make a start." Kurt kisses him one last time and then Blaine is closing the door, knowing he won't see Kurt again until they're both home, together, in New York.

* * *

**A/N: **So there you have it, that's it except for the epilogue which really isn't needed to round out this story but that I wrote anyway because I'm an indulgent romantic. Expect a pretty epic A/N with that to thank everyone who helped. For now, I guess this is it!


	17. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

Blaine isn't meant to meet Kurt at the airport. Kurt's flight is delayed out of Heathrow and Blaine has a big caseload at the moment because two promotions in a year will do that. This make the trek out to JFK is expensive and pointless, so Kurt calls Blaine and tells him not to worry.

He secretly hopes Blaine will ignore him, though, because by the time the plane touches down his heart aches with missing him more than ever and knowing that soon, _soon, _his heart will ache with too much happiness.

Sure enough, Blaine is waiting behind an absurdly large bunch of red and yellow roses at the arrivals gate; the flowers fall to the ground when Kurt squeals and flings himself into Blaine's arms.

They hug and hug and someone pushes the flowers back in closer to their feet so they're not trampled, but neither of them notices.

They hug until they're kissing, hanging on to each other and saying, "Hi, Hello, How are you?" over and over and over.

Eventually they remember themselves, and when they pull apart there are a few wandering eyes glancing at them, arched eyebrows and knowing looks and smiles. Kurt picks his flowers up off the ground and says, "Thank you," as he tries to reassemble them into the perfect bouquet they were a minute ago.

Blaine just shrugs and grips Kurt's hand, pulling Kurt's luggage along behind him. "Thank you," Blaine says for no obvious reason.

They make it half way to the exit before Blaine stops Kurt with a tug and a small frown. "We're gonna move in together, right?" he asks. They haven't spoken about it at all, their immediate future always seeming so far away until it became _now_. They've discussed neighbourhoods and kids and politics, all the things down the road, but not what comes next.

Kurt grins though, nodding and saying, "We'd better be," like it's obvious.

"Good."

They make it a few more steps and Blaine is pulling him back again. "I um…" He seems flustered and it makes Kurt smile. Then he's dropping to one knee in the JFK Arrivals lounge, and blinking hard before he looks up at Kurt.

There's a ring, but Kurt can't focus long enough to note anything about it. His eyes are too wide, his mouth falling open as the inevitable plays out in front of him.

"I'm proposing," Blaine says, and then rethinks that. "I mean…" He takes a deep breath and looks at the dirty carpet underfoot and then looks back up. "Will you marry me?"

He doesn't say it's ridiculous, he doesn't say it might not work. He doesn't qualify it at all.

Kurt takes too long to answer though, utterly flabbergasted, and Blaine begins speaking again. "What I'm asking is—"

"Yes, of course," Kurt speaks over the top of him. "Yes!"

He pulls Blaine up and grasps the ring in the palm of his hand and kisses Blaine again. "You couldn't wait until we were somewhere romantic," he chastises against his lips.

"I was going to," Blaine tells him, pulling back. "I had a plan but then I got here and I saw you and—"

Blaine's voice stutters and stops. Kurt is smiling at him, eyes playful. He's holding up a small red box between them.

"What's this?" Blaine asks, voice cracking.

"This was going to be a surprise for dinner tomorrow night. We have some pretty classy reservations," Kurt says.

Blaine clicks the box open and stares. "You were going to ask me?"

"To marry me?" Kurt smiles, ducking his head to look at the ring nestled in his palm. He slips it on to his own wedding finger. "Of course I was."

Blaine draws a shaky breath and pulls his ring from the box, sliding it on. He stares at it until Kurt interlaces their fingers, hands holding tight and the two metal bands catching against each other. Blaine breathes, once slowly, grinning so hard it aches. He laughs through a hiccup and then sniffles, staring at Kurt's equally wet blue eyes. "For so long as we both shall live," he says.

* * *

**A/N: **So that's done. I've been writing this off and on for over a year. I started and stopped with 'Dark Blue' and then I absolutely had to try again when canon demanded it. And so many people have helped me.

Izzy heard the entire story told to her in my stream-of-conscious narrative as I drove her home one morning and she begged me to write it. When I actually did start to write it she badgered and bitched and read it as I went, telling me it was good and poking me when it wasn't and she never let me stop writing. She helped me come up with the title. She told me to quote from Plato's 'Symposia' for the summary. Instrumental, is what she is.

Tyna for editing this beautifully. She read it all through and assured me the pacing and characterisation and narrative were good. And then she read every chapter and searched for typos and inconsistencies and must have added several hundred commas and deleted several hundred 'ands' which was exactly what this story needed.

Jude for reading the whole thing and then flailing at me in such a way that I was sure I'd written something good. And then for helping me build the last few chapters up to what they are now.

Stut—ter for reading through the first few chapters and offering some insightful feedback and some smart editing tips.

Becca for answering some of my dumber questions about US college and law and being a lawyer in New York.

Thank you to all of them and thank you to all of you who have talked to me about this fic, who have sent me massages or reviewed, who have reblogged or liked or whatever! I have had a blast these last three weeks and it makes me want to write multi-chapter fics forever and ever. I don't want to leave this verse and I am so happy to talk about it and will seriously consider writing some ficlets to fill missing scenes and future events.

I will say, finally, that the title and summary of this fic deserves some explanation. I rambled about it on tumblr the other night and if anyone wants more explanation I would be very happy to oblige.

Anyway, thanks for playing, hope the epilogue was the cherry on top. Done.


End file.
